


These Quiet Hours Turning to Years

by 1701Trekkie



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: S02E14 The Icarus Factor, Episode: s01e10 Hide and Q, Episode: s02e19 Manhunt, Episode: s03e13 Deja Q, Ethical Dilemmas, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28948779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1701Trekkie/pseuds/1701Trekkie
Summary: The first season episode "Hide and Q" features William Riker confronted with the offer of omnipotence, but Deanna Troi is absent. This fic sets to correct that error and posits how the canon would change from that point. The most immediate fallout - Deanna never gets stranded on Vagra II, so Tasha Yar isn't killed. The introductory chapter features a framing story with a Vulcan female and Human male OCs (who may not reappear).Apparently I've decided to take this AU all the way through from TNG Season 1 on so... stay tuned for more episodes, I guess?
Relationships: Lwaxana Troi/Tasha Yar, Original Female Character/Original Male Character, William Riker/Deanna Troi
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

**Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, Stardate 141553**

Part of the joys of being a diplomat on Earth is getting to meet people from all corners of the Federation. Of course, not everyone can be a diplomat. Or a speechwriter. No, Mark was none of those things and he was perfectly happy with that. He was a researcher for the legal attaché to the Alpha Centauri ambassador to the Federation Council. Saint-Germain was about as close to Paris as he could get, and he was happy with that too. The metropolis was just too busy, and the layers of government in the city meant that you couldn’t swing a dead Caitian without hitting some embassy or agency.

The apartment was nothing special, but it had walls lined with books in French, Vulcan, Federation Standard, and English. He couldn’t read the Vulcan books, but he was content with that too. The language was beautiful to look at, and he enjoyed the long lazy nights when T’Savas would read to him.

They had met several years earlier and had shared this small apartment for the last three. T’Savas spent a fair amount of time cooking. She lacked the aversion that many Vulcans had to touching food with bare hands. She had come to France as a cultural interpreter for the Vulcan embassy and had stayed after obtaining her own cultural liaison position. The food was part of communicating with others and it left Mark with a full belly and fuller heart. She could very easily find quarters closer to the Vulcan embassy, but Mark was attached to this place. It was not illogical to share this space, so they had set about making it theirs.

Mark lived for the cool autumns and winters, which meant T’Savas spent that time covered in blankets and in sweatshirts. The warm springs and often-sweltering continental summers were her time to shine. She left the windows and doors open and placed warm-colored fabric hangings in the doorways. Mark spent that time sweltering and in the latest breathable t-shirts made, coincidentally, of Vulcan cotton. Today was the beginning of May and the seasonal rotation had begun. The place was beginning to look more like a Vulcan parlor rather than a Centauri den.

T’Savas and Mark both kept up on current affairs as part of their jobs and a striking piece of news had come across the news wires just after they had gotten home for the evening. Mark flicked off the holo and stormed to his feet and out of the living room and into the kitchen. His voice was louder than the apartment could handle, and it bounced off the ersatz plaster and back into the living room where T’Savas sat cross-legged on the couch. "I can't believe they're leaving!"

She responded in a calm tone. She knew very well that his emotions were not directed at her. As with many humans, Mark displayed emotions more often than was polite. He was usually quite calm with her, which she appreciated. "There is no logical need to worry, we knew they were going to leave eventually."

Mark looked out from the kitchen door back to her. "But who’s going to look out for us now?" His voice was almost wounded, abandoned. He admitted to himself that there was no logical reason to feel that way. He had loving parents, grandparents, and even six great-grandparents still alive. He had three siblings and seven nieces and nephews. He’d never wanted for affection. Even T’Savas showed it in her own way more often than not.

"We were able to look out for ourselves before them, Mark. We will be able to take care of our own needs without them." She would know. She was 73 years old and had come up with stories of the world as it was before. Unlike the stories Mark heard, Vulcan stories were always factual and absent of flights of fancy. Vulcan prose was nothing if not utilitarian. Mark, however, had a keen sense of the darkest points of Human history.

"Humanity almost destroyed itself!" he said. He had now grabbed a dish towel and was wringing it between his hands.

T’Savas pursed her lips. Her eyebrows remained unmoved and she stared at him. Her people had also suffered the same catastrophe, accompanied by the tragedy of the Sundering. There was no point in bringing that up now, it would just derail his train of thought. "And then you rebuilt your world with a speed that left my people... I hesitate to say 'stunned' but at least impressed."

"That's because you saved us. You came and showed us we weren't alone."

She disfavored this particular line of historical interpretation. She knew it not to be true and found it frustrating that it persisted among certain doom-minded Humans. "You're talking about pale blue dot theory."

"Yes. We almost destroyed ourselves and then you showed up and--”

"We did no such thing,” she responded tersely. She remained unmoved on the couch, still cross-legged in a tunic and trousers.

She was not about to let him launch into a Vulcan Savior tirade. She humored it when it suited her, and she found it useful to let him think that she was a superior being, but now was not the time for Human pessimism. “We spent a century hampering your progress because you terrified us. You found it within yourselves to become better, and did it so much faster than we did."

Mark chuckled the chuckle of every Human who hears a Vulcan mention an emotion. "Terrified you?"

T’Savas knitted her eyebrows together over the bridge of her nose. Emotion was always a game between them, and she knew she’d slipped. "Well. For lack of a better term, of course.”

Never forget that Vulcans do experience emotions. And T’Savas, being someone whose entire life was dedicated to interfacing with other cultures, was in touch with them far more than many of her people. Her knitted eyebrows released and she paused for a long moment. “Logic can lead to many outcomes. It’s not perfect as much as we pretend it to be. I mean, being with you seemed logical.” The rightmost edge of her lip curled upward and her eyes softened. She knew the play.

Mark loved the look on her face, and knew it meant he was losing. He really didn’t care because it meant he got to see that face. And he got to point out the obvious. “Are you smiling again?”

Her face remained as it was as she responded. “Merely trying to provoke an emotional response.”

The shadow of a smile disappeared in an instant and Mark looked back at her, confused. “There is someone outside the door,” T’Savas said.

Always one to state the obvious when next to his superpowered girlfriend, Mark made the most useless comment of his life. “I don’t hear anyone.”

“It sounded like—“ but before she could finish the sentence, the door chimed. She unfolded her legs and rose from the couch. “Who is it?”

She already knew who it was before the baritone came through the comm from the other side of the door. “Our ears were burning and we thought we’d pay you a visit, but Deanna thought it was only polite to knock.”

\----  
**U.S.S. Enterprise-D, en route to Quadra Sigma III, Stardate 41591**  
**One Century Earlier**

William Riker sat in a Jean-Luc Picard’s ready room, gifted abilities beyond comprehension by the Q continuum. The power dynamics in this room had shifted. The two men sat across from each other at Picard’s desk for the hundredth time, the same array of trinkets and the same desk monitor sitting between them.

Behind Riker, on the couch, sat Deanna Troi. Her dark colorless eyes studied the two men and their interaction. She had been with the medical teams when Q intercepted the ship, and she had just learned about the deadly game he had played with the bridge crew.

Deanna analyzed her role in the situation. She knew how the mind worked, how emotions worked, and how trauma worked. Beyond that she knew how William Riker worked. It was almost amusing to her to see Picard try to understand him.

“Are you worried that I won't be able to say no to it?” Riker asked of his captain.

“You tell me,” Picard replied. “Are you strong enough to refuse to use that power?” Picard was an intelligent man, but in this moment Troi didn't need her betazoid senses to know that his idealism was getting the best of him. He’d known Will for what, six months? She had known him for years, and their souls were entwined in a way that could not be undone.

“Captain,” Troi interrupted, “would you ask Worf not to use his strength? Would you ask me not to use my empathy? Why ask Commander Riker to not use these powers?”

“Because they are not his, Counselor,” retorted Picard, “they are the powers of the Q.”

“And my empathic sense comes from being half-Betazoid,” corrected Troi. “Lieutenant LaForge can only see because of the power of sight given to him by medical science. Commander Data can only do the things he can because he was designed and given those same powers by another being. What’s the difference in what Q has given to Will?” She slipped, and it was clear to her if not to Picard.

Deanna had been consummately professional these past few months. When in a professional setting, he was Commander Riker, not “Will.”

Will noticed, though. He turned back to her with a smirk and then back to Picard.

“You see, Jean-Luc?” Will himself slipped, he had never dared use the Captain’s given name. Emboldened by these new powers, and Deanna’s encouragement, he was coming to appreciate the gift he’d been given. “These abilities are something we can put to good use, not just for Quadra Sigma but for all humanity. For all of the Federation!”

The older man sighed. “Will,” he said somewhere between reasoning and pleading, “you mustn’t allow yourself to use this power again. It's too great a temptation for us at our present stage of development.”

Deanna had an answer for Picard this time. “But, sir, how do we grow into power without using it? You didn’t know how to command a starship until you took command of the Stargazer when her captain was killed.” Deanna was very thorough when it came to her job, so she had studied Picard’s record closely. “You would not be the captain you are now if you hadn’t taken that risk.”

Picard replayed the moment in his head. The Captain dead, the first officer a useless mess of nerves, and him, a Lieutenant stepping in above his station. Deanna was right, of course. If he hadn’t asserted himself, the crew of the Stargazer may very well have died then and there. He also remembered the wager he made with Q. His command against Q leaving humanity alone. Q needed to stop meddling, and if Riker rejecting these powers had to come through orders, so be it.

“No,” Picard clipped back. “These powers are not his. He does not have them because of some choice he made. They were forced upon him.” He turned his head back to his first officer.

“Will, I order you not to use the powers of the Q. They are too much for us, and Q is tempting you like…” he grasped for a simile and found himself having to rely on the Christian bible “...like Satan in the desert. These are too much for humanity to handle.”

Well aware of the implications of owing a debt to the Q, Riker nodded. Jean-Luc was still his commanding officer, and orders were orders. He made eye contact with Deanna, though, when he replied to Picard. “Aye, sir.”

\----  
**Quadra Sigma III, two hours later**

Riker had been to places like this before but never once had he enjoyed it. Despite all the improvements in safety systems over the centuries, there were still accidents. A “methane” explosion. How could such a thing happen, in this day and age?

He materialized in a safe area next to a malfunctioning door accompanied by Commander Data, Dr. Crusher, Counselor Troi, and two medical aides. It seemed odd to him now that the ship should use resources to beam him down but those were the orders.

A malfunctioning door sat to one side of the landing area and Riker, ever one to lead from the front, sprang toward it. Unable to force it open with what he judged was the appropriate amount of “human” strength, he pointed to Data. The android forced the door open effortlessly.

No one could have been ready to see what was on the other side of the door. Three people, a man, woman, and child, huddled together on a low shelf, barefoot. Inch-deep water rested over a broken concrete floor.

“Is there anyone else?” Riker inquired.

“It’s just us,” replied the woman. There were another half-dozen people off to one end of the small chamber. This area was now cut off from the rest of the underground by a cave-in. That meant nearly five hundred people were dead. Deanna climbed onto the shelf next to the man, woman and child and began to talk to them softly. She gently assessed their mental status while Beverly treated their injuries. The other two assistants tended to the other group.

Data scanned the area with a tricorder and noted a pile of rubble. “Commander, there is someone under that pile.” Data put away the tricorder and sprinted to the pile. Riker lifted some rocks, again limiting himself to what he thought was an appropriate amount of strength. Next to him, Data tossed boulders to the side as if they were styrofoam. After only a few moments, the android’s efforts revealed a motionless child.

Even Data seemed shocked by what he saw and stood unmoving for a long moment. She was young, maybe ten years old at most. Her left arm was bent backwards and her cheek rested on it, the other arm pinned above her head. The right side of her face was covered with blood and torn from the avalanche. Data wrested the body from the pile and Crusher rushed to the side. She took vitals by hand as the android held the child gently.

“It’s too late,” the doctor said in that mournful but matter-of-fact tone that only doctors can muster. “She’s dead.” Beverly reached under the child’s lifeless form and took her from Data. The girl was still warm. “If only we’d gotten here a little sooner.”

It was Data, of all people, who made the fateful suggestion. “Sir, if indeed you have the power of Q…” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Even Data knew the implication.

Beverly had been out of the loop.“I don’t understand,” the doctor said, confused. “Certainly you can’t bring her back to life.”

Riker paused for too long. “I’m… under orders…” He looked over to Deanna, whose attention had been drawn by the commotion. Her eyes were soft, looking between the child and the man who could yet save her.

As a rule, Deanna no longer tried to reach out to Will with her thoughts, but he knew her well enough to read her mind from the look on her face. It was simple. She would support him.

Deanna crossed the broken, wet floor toward them, quickly filling Beverly in on the details. Will confirmed what she said. If the emotionless android suggested that he save the child’s life, and if Deanna was with him…

Will reached out his hand toward the child. Before he even touched her, she gasped. She panted, as if trying to catch her breath after the wind was knocked out of her. Large, dark eyes scanned around the cavern as Will snatched his hand back, shocked by what he had done.

Beverly gasped and smiled, still cradling the resurrected girl in her arms. “It’s all right, you’ll be all right now.”

Deanna came to stand next to her former lover and reached up to place a hand on his shoulder for the first time since they had started serving together. “You did the right thing, Will.”

He placed his hand over hers and looked down into her eyes. “I doubt Jean-Luc will agree with you.”

\----  
**U.S.S. Enterprise-D, Picard’s ready room, some time later**

Jean-Luc Picard was livid, or as livid as he could let himself become. He was once again behind his desk opposite William Riker. This time, his first officer was on his feet. “I’m disappointed in you, Will. You should never have used that power. Once you become accustomed to it…”

“Then what?! I could save the lives of more children? Prevent more accidents?!” Will filled the room with righteous anger. He was half the captain’s age and for once his relative youth manifested itself in rebellion.

Picard stared at the half-Betazoid sitting on the couch. “And I suppose you agreed with this? Encouraged him?”

“I said nothing, Captain.” It’s easy to play innocent when you are innocent. “It was Commander Data’s suggestion.”

“You certainly did nothing to discourage him. And you,” Picard directed back to Riker, “you disobeyed a direct order.”

“As soon as it's convenient, Captain,” he almost spat the word, “I want a meeting with you and your bridge staff.”

“As soon as we are secure of this rescue operation, I'll discuss all of this new power…” but Picard was cut off as Riker stormed from the room.

Picard’s eyes turned back to Troi. “You have to talk some sense into him,” his tone grew more concerned, but still annoyed. “Will is jeopardizing his career this way.”

“I don’t think it’s his career that he has in mind, Captain.” Deanna knew Will. Though they had been apart, she still knew his heart. “He saved a child’s life. We’re all here to make the universe a better place, aren’t we? We came here to perform a rescue operation and Commander Riker did exactly that.”

“But he disobeyed a direct order, and now look at him.” Jean-Luc was a little dismayed. “Will Riker is one of the finest officers in the fleet.” Deanna could tell that it pained Picard to see him this way. “He would never talk to me like that before today.”

“Will experiences emotions very deeply, Captain. It would have torn him apart to let that child die.”

“Remain dead, Counselor,” Picard corrected her. “The child was dead before we arrived.”

“Now that he has the power to choose, they’re the same thing to him.”

Picard knew she was right on some level. He imagined his younger self would probably have done exactly the same thing. “Can you try to talk to him, at least? He can’t become too reliant on these powers or they’ll consume him.”

“I will try, sir, but I can’t promise he’ll listen.”

“That’s all I can ask.”

\----  
**Riker’s Quarters**

Will was sitting on a chair in a corner as Deanna walked in. He looked out at the tan-and-blue planet below obscured by the high white clouds and the low mist that seemed to dominate the view. He started the conversation in the middle, as if he had already been discussing it with her. “I could have saved them all, you know. Every last colonist.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because… she was right there.” He turned from the window and looked at her. He leaned far back in the comfortable chair. “I don’t understand, Deanna. I stopped myself. I have all the power in the universe, I could still bring them back. Why haven’t I?”

“I can’t answer that question for you, Commander.” She had a job to do here. As much as she believed he could do great good with these powers, she agreed that he couldn’t use them safely.

“I’m not your patient, Imzadi.” It had been a long time since he’d used that word unprompted. She was as surprised as if a Caldorian eel had slithered up her spine. She stood a bit taller with the shock.

“No, but I still care for you. And I know that you like power, Will. You couldn’t admit it, maybe not even to yourself, but that’s why you didn’t stay on Betazed. You want to be a Starfleet officer, you want to be a Captain. What are those things but means to power and control?”

She could see through him and he knew he couldn’t defend himself from it. “These powers will let me do things that I could never dream. Save lives. Protect the innocent and the helpless.” He paused, meeting her gaze, “I can do that now in a way Starfleet never could.”

“But you can’t do it on your own.” She walked over to the side of his chair and placed a hand on the back of the chair. “You need structure, Will. Do you think you would be successful outside Starfleet? You need order. You need something outside yourself or you will let this power consume you. Picard knows that, and so do you.”

He had no defense. She was probably right, though something in his upbringing kept him from admitting the struggles of his youth. No, he knew what he had to do. He rose and walked past her into the hall and called back. “Come on, it’s time for that meeting.”

\----  
**The Bridge, half an hour later**

The bridge crew had been assembled and Riker had a sales pitch to make. “Because I've been given unusual powers, I am not suddenly a monster. Except for these abilities, and I don't yet know how far they go, I'm the same William T. Riker you've always known.”

The bridge crew, including the young Acting Ensign Crusher, looked at him with trepidation. Data looked back with his bemused blank stare. Picard was clearly growing testy. This conversation would have landed differently in a year, or five, or ten but these people hadn’t known him that long.

Deanna regarded Will with something else entirely. She had decided to humor him, but the silence from the rest of the crew unnerved him. “Well? Everyone still looks uncomfortable.”

Picard couldn’t resist a dig. As high as he’s risen, he still had the ability to be petty when cornered. “Perhaps they're all remembering that old saying. Power corrupts.”

Riker cocked his head and responded with a tone that could only be described as sass. Haughty, but playful. “And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Do you believe I haven't thought of that, Jean-Luc?”

Picard had had quite enough of this. “And have you noticed how you and I are now on a first-name basis? You’ve changed already, Will.”

Riker threw his hands out to the side. “Only for the better! Using the Q power to save that girl was the right thing to do. Just as right as it was to save the rest of you from those soldiers in Q’s game.”

Picard clucked his tongue. “Keep in mind that that particular danger was invented by Q.”

Lt. Tasha Yar, the self-assured Chief of Security, spoke up from her position behind the sweep of the tactical console. “That’s what we represent to the Q, Commander. Lowly animals, tormented into performing for their amusement.”

Riker shook his head dismissively. “Actually, they think highly of us, Tasha. We have a quality of growth which they admire.”

“Or fear” added LaForge.

“I think it may be a bit of both,” Troi added.

Picard turned to Troi, his head cocked. “How so?”

Troi shugged. “Well, if they truly feared us they wouldn’t have given us the chance to prove ourselves at Farpoint. I think they want to know more about humanity than they let on.”

“Are these truly your friends, brother?” Every head on the bridge swiveled to see Q. He stood in shadows by the starboard-aft entrance to the observation lounge wearing the rough-spun habit of an old Earth monk. “Let us pray for understanding and compassion.”

Picard had tolerated enough of this entity. Any pretence at diplomacy gone, he raised his voice. “Let us do no such damned thing! What is this need of yours for costumes, Q? Have you no identity of your own?”

“I come in search of the truth,” Q replied meekly.

“You come in search of what humanity is!” Picard observed, verging on the irate.

“I don’t think so, Captain,” Troi interjected. As Picard’s ability to engage in diplomacy failed, Troi stepped up to calm the situation. It was a reflex that had served her well. “The Q know what humanity already is, sir. I think what they want is to know what humanity will be.”

Q’s eyes widened and he extended his arms in praise. His head fell back and he acclaimed to the heavens. “Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. One of you savage children finally understands. Tell me Picard, where have you been hiding this insightful creature?”

“She’s not yours, Q, she’s my ship’s counselor.” Picard wasn’t about to have Q take a shine to another one of his officers, not twice in the same day.

Q didn’t actually listen to Picard’s response. His eyes rested on Deanna’s face as he walked toward her. His hands returned within the habit’s sleeves, she remained firmly in her seat. “Tell me more, my child. Why was I sent here to proselytize to you all?”

“Well,” said Troi, crossing her legs, “I don’t think you’re here to tempt us. I think you’re still here to test us, to try humanity as you did at Farpoint. We may not be the savage child race you accused us of, and you want to know what we’re capable of.”

Will spoke up. He stood beyond the sweeping arc of the tactical console and put his foot up on it as he spoke. “You want to see what humanity will be like once we grow to be like the Q. You need to know if we will be a friend or a foe.”

Choirs of angels sang out as divine light radiated down from the dome of the bridge onto Q, Riker, and Troi. “Brother and Sister you have spoken revelation that eluded even your most erudite brethren.” Q’s austere tone softened and he smiled. Not a smile of a cat with his toy but a smile of a teacher watching a student graduate. “You are both… entirely… correct.”

With a starlike flash Q’s habit disappeared and was replaced with a Starfleet captain’s uniform. He proceeded to walk around the bridge, speaking to the crew in turn.

“You see, we are an ancient people but we weren’t all that different from you once. You will be like us one day, we have no doubt about that. So we needed to know -- who will you be when you get here? That’s the point of this game, mon capitane, not to see if Riker is worthy of this power but what humanity will do with it when the time comes.”

“And so what, Q,” Picard barked, “has he passed your little test? Has he played this game to your satisfaction?”

“Oh no, he absolutely has not,” Q laughed. Riker looked surprised, but Q looked to Troi to finish the thought.

“Because he didn’t play it alone,” she said through a smile. Deanna was a bright kid in school, and she loved being right. And she felt a bit proud at having figured out something that had vexed Picard so thoroughly.

“Precisely cherie,” Q purred. “He had you to work it out with him. You two are like the pieces of a very simple puzzle. Neither of you does anything alone, much like humanity itself.”

“But she’s not entirely human, you know that,” Picard intruded.

Q responded with a testiness that Picard himself had demonstrated moments before. “Of course I know that Jean-Luc. How dull you must think I am. No, she’s half-Betazoid and comprehends emotions far better than anyone else on this crew. She also illustrates the larger point -- the mistake we made in choosing Riker.”

“Because I’m not a solitary being,” Riker replied.

“Correct again, Riker!” Q’s face beamed at the answer. “You are entwined with this beautiful soul.” He again smiled at Deanna and looked to her as he continued to speak. “So, Riker, you passed our test only with the help of the perceptive Counselor Troi here. However shall we iron out that little wrinkle?”

\----  
**Saint-Germain-en-Laye**

Mark couldn’t get over himself. He was sitting at the dining room table with the two most impactful people of the past century. He had dined with ambassadors at various, tedious events but they were nothing compared to these two. They had moved literal mountains, saved countless lives, and now here they were politely eating a meal T’Savas had meticulously prepared. He was somewhere between giddy, terrified, and overawed.

“I never imagined plomeek soup en croûte,” Riker mused. Though he hadn’t aged a day since Quadra Sigma III, he had a beard tonight, very neatly trimmed. Whether he had one or not was often mentioned in news reports whenever the two of them made an appearance. He had the beard more often than not, and his fans argued vehemently over which look he pulled off better.

T’Savas was, in her own way, honored to have them as well. She hid any emotions well, and her mental discipline was second to none despite the shows of affection she would deploy with Mark. “After four hundred years of culinary fusion it would be unlikely if no one else had done it by now.”

Deanna spoke up. “Well I think it’s delicious. The pastry sets off the blandness of the broth and makes for an excellent palate cleanser.” An ageless century later, the Daughter of the Fifth House remained a goddess wherever she appeared. After all, she was nobility long before she was a therapist or a Starfleet officer. She knew how to present herself perfectly in any situation and tonight was in a little black dress. Riker almost looked like a peasant in comparison.

“I thought it was supposed to be the main dish?” Riker mused. He still liked food, and he still liked to cook. He would often make appointments to meet with famous chefs and learn their signature dishes. Very few ever turned him down, most famously an old Creole chef who preferred to take his gumbo with him to the grave.

T’Savas was quite adept at talking about food and could do it for hours. Culinary theory enthralled her, and fusion cuisine? Well, everything was fusion cuisine now. “It can be a starter or palate cleanser. It’s typically a breakfast food, but putting it en croûte could place it anywhere in the meal. For us it serves as a light dinner.”

Mark had been quiet for almost the entire meal. He probably had something to contribute, but the starstruck man had no ability to relax. He had finally mustered up the courage to speak, and he released it in a breathless litany of ill-timed praise.

“Thank you for coming, I’m just really glad you came. It’s really an honor. I’m glad we had enough to share. I’m sorry we don’t have more, but we can replicate something else for you.”

Deanna responded with a kind, almost motherly tone. “That really isn’t necessary. We weren’t here to eat.”

“It is nonetheless edifying to welcome you to our home,” T’Savas added, as much to calm Mark’s nerves as anything else.

Riker tried to steer the conversation away from poor Mark’s nerves and back to culinary pursuits. “Do you cook like this every night?”

“Only at the end of the workweek,” the Vulcan confessed. “We are fortunate to have schedules that generally coincide, and I tend to keep some simple puff pastry chilled in case of company.”

Deanna had endured enough talk of food, she wanted to know more about her hosts. “I love the décor, it seems like Centauri/Vulcan fusion?”

“We share the decor,” T’Savas almost boasted. She was, after a fashion, proud that Mark took any kind of interest in the appearance of their home. “Mark decorates in the winter, I in the summer. We are in a transitional phase thanks to springtime.”

For an ageless being, Will was still impatient and saw a segue he couldn’t help but take up. “Speaking of times of transition…”

\----  
**Betazed, Stardate 41601**

A pair of Q lay under the sun of Betazed and let the rays bathe their skin. No matter how well-balanced modern nutrition was there was no substitute for sunshine. No vitamin supplement was quite as good for your soul, Deanna thought, as proper sunlight. She’d had a sunlight lamp in her quarters on the Enterprise for days when she needed a pick-me-up, but now she had all the time in the world to lay under the sky.

Wind rolled over their forms as they lay on the vast, flowered plain and stared at the sky. It was the native of Betazed who spoke first. “So where do we go now, Imzadi?”

Will grew warm faster than Deanna did. You could take the boy from Alaska, but he would still start to overheat when the days got even a little too warm for him. “Wherever we want to, I suppose. Do whatever we want. See whatever we want.”

“I have something to confess,” Deanna said, her eyes fixed on the sky above.

“I’ll be your confessor if you’ll be mine,” replied her Imzadi, rolling onto his elbow to smile at her.

Deanna felt somewhat foolish for the feeling. She knew, of course, that her emotions were valid, but it didn’t stop her from being somewhat embarrassed about this particular one. “I need to know what it felt like,” she said humbly, “to bring that girl back to life.”

Deanna knew that she’d certainly saved lives before. She’d had her share of patients who had been actively suicidal. She’d helped people through grief that clouded their enjoyment of life. She’d even helped to end planetary conflicts, but she’d never brought the dead truly to life.

Will smiled softly. “I’ve never felt anything like it. It didn’t feel like I was abusing the power. It felt like I was restoring some kind of balance.”

Thoughts of life, however, brought up thoughts of death, though. “You’ve never been in combat, you’ve never…” He trailed off and his smile faded to sad reverie.

Deanna raised herself up onto her elbow and looked back at him. “...what is it?”

He looked down to avoid her gaze. “I’ve killed people, Deanna,” he confessed to her. “You know that, right?”

Part of being a therapist, for Deanna at least, was the inability to ever really turn it off. “I assumed, I knew that there were things you hadn’t shared with me.” She pushed the psychoanalysis down inside her. She knew that it was far more important to be a present partner for him. “I always thought we would have the time to talk about them. Now it appears we have it.”

Will rolled to his back and sighed as if it let the bad thoughts out to blow away on the wind. “It felt good to bring her back.”

Deanna rolled onto her stomach, resting on her elbows, bending her knees to dangle her feet up into the air. “You asked before - why didn’t you bring back everyone who had died in the disaster? Would that have felt as good?”

Will matched Deanna’s move, putting him parallel to her on the grass. You couldn’t go through Starfleet Academy without studying philosophy, or ethics. For those on the command track, as he had been, there was also Ethics of Command. Though he had internalized those lessons, Will still needed her help to put words to his decision.

“That would have been too much. I can’t entirely explain why. That girl had died minutes before, and due to an accident that she had no part in causing. Not only was she an innocent victim, but if we had been just a few minutes earlier we could have saved her by conventional means.”

He studied her face as he spoke, watching her take the moral journey with him. “Saving all of those killed in the initial accident? That felt like too much. But her? I couldn’t let her die. And but for random chance, she wouldn’t have died. That’s why it felt not only right, but just.”

Working out the Ethics of Omnipotence could be the work of lifetimes, but Deanna was on board for the quick-and-dirty version. She had to construct a new morality that encompassed their vast power. “But wouldn’t it have been just to save all of the colonists?”

“There’s no clear way to draw that line, Imzadi.” He had worked out the morality himself, even if it had been ham-fisted and needed her to guide him to understanding. “If we let everyone die, we’ve done nothing. If we let no one die?”

“Then we’re playing god,” Deanna completed the thought.

“Exactly,” her Imzadi agreed.

She rolled the concept around in her mind. She found a comparison that, while not perfect, seemed to make sense to her. “I think I agree with you. It’s like the sheriffs of the Ancient West. They can’t be everywhere at once, and sometimes bad things happen to good people. It’s not fair, but it just… is.”

“Exactly. The Q could save everyone, but they don’t.”

“We don’t,” Deanna corrected with a melodious laugh.

“So is that it? We live as sheriffs?” Riker joked.

She dropped her voice and arched her eyebrows “I always saw myself as more of a ‘mysterious stranger.’” She laughed again, and her Imzadi joined her laughter and rolled toward her on the grass.

**\----**  
**Seward, Alaska, Stardate 41612**

“You’re not suggesting that we test people to see if they deserve to live?” Deanna sat at a table overlooking a long inlet from the Pacific Ocean. The water was almost powder blue, striking in its difference from the deep oceans elsewhere on the planet. On the table were the remaining pieces of native salmon sushi that the two of them had shared as they continued to debate the ethics of their omnipotence.

“No. Not like what Q did at Farpoint. We need to have some kind of rules, though. Our own Prime Directive.” Will had finished his portion of sushi long before and was drinking a very dark porter. They were in his domain now, but he had been away from the chill long enough for it to nip at his fingers.

“So what do we do? Save the innocent from the vicissitudes of fate, but don’t rewrite history?” She contemplated for a moment the individual fish that went to feed her. They didn’t need to eat, of course, but they hadn’t gotten out of the habit.

“As simple as that, yes.” The porter would only affect him if he allowed it, but Will knew that his judgment wasn’t impaired by it.

“But you understand that for every life we save…”

“I know, I know. What if the person we save grows up to be the next Khan Singh. We act in the moment. We don’t look ahead.” He gestured with one hand, the glass held tight in the other. Deanna may be bundled head to foot and wearing thin gloves, but Will would be damned if he let the chill get into his hands. He wouldn’t admit to himself that he was cheating to keep them a little warmer than they would be otherwise.

Deanna poked at the sushi with her chopsticks and addressed them as much as she did Will. “I think that’s fair. Do what is right in that moment for the person or people that need our help. Help they wouldn’t otherwise get.”

“Right,” agreed Riker.

Deanna took another piece of salmon and took her time to enjoy the buttery flesh of the local fish. Once she swallowed, she mused “how long do we do this, then? Forever?”

“I think an eternity of playing hero would eventually get old,” said Riker. He was every bit the dashing hero, now more than ever, but she knew that he wanted to rest someday.

“The rest of our natural lives, then,” Deanna posed matter-of-factly.

Will laughed. “There’s nothing natural about our lifespan, Deanna!”

“We know what our life span would have been,” she pushed back. “It’s only fair for us to impact the galaxy for the same amount of time we would have had we not become Q. A hundred years.”

“And then… what?”

“Then we see the universe. Go to the Continuum. See everything that can be seen. Do everything that can be done.” She set down her chopsticks and pulled her chair a bit closer to his. She pulled her thin gloves off and placed them on the table, and took his hands into hers. The deep darkness of her eyes and met the blue of his, a blue that reflected the water beside them. “We’ll spend forever together.”

Will’s face had a look that only Deanna gets to see, and she saw it as he spoke now. “I can’t think of anything else I would like to do in all of creation.”

They held hands for a long time by that inlet. Seagulls cried in the air. A boat horn sounded. Light fog began to creep up. None of these things could distract them from one another. It was Deanna again who eventually broke the silence.

“...Imzadi?”

“Yes, Imzadi?”

“I’m ready to save a life.”

\----  
**Saint-Germain-en-Laye**

Mark stared at the Troi-Rikers in disbelief, his jaw agape like some sort of stereotype. He finally mustered a weak “you can’t be serious.”

“As a heart attack,” Riker responded pithily.

T’Savas was all the more confused, though her control remained well and intact. “And what of you two? You are still leaving.”

“Into the great unknown,” Riker mused, “being the explorers we would have been.” He had a faraway look in his eyes as he glanced sideways at Deanna. “Maybe we’ll come back someday, see how it got along without us.”

Deanna was growing wistful. “I would really like to find the finest beach in the universe and sun myself for a decade. I think that we’ve earned at least that much.”

Mark understood, but almost didn’t want to. “And in the meantime, you would want… us?”

“It is a unique offer,” T’Savas admitted as she looked to Mark.

“The first of many,” Riker said. “And in time, you make that offer to others. Them to others. Down through the centuries. This would be our legacy.”

“But why us?” Mark questioned, “we’re not even remotely special.”

“Oh, but you are!” Deanna beamed, looking over the two that they had chosen from among all the billions. The two they wanted to carry on their legacy.

“I live in libraries,” Mark said, recalling his simple work as a researcher. “She lives in meetings and conferences.”

“And I lived in a therapist’s office,” Troi rebuffed, “and he lived under piles of paperwork managing a starship of a thousand lives. We are all much more than our professions, Mark.”

“And you two,” Riker added, “have something unique among the billions of souls we have encountered.”

T’Savas knew it couldn’t be as simple as a Vulcan and a Human being together. There was something about them that must have piqued the interest of these two demi-gods. “And may I ask what that is?”

The two omnipotent beings looked at each other and sighed happily. Deanna laughed like the tinkling of silver bells in the distance. “You remind us of ourselves.”

Will looked at T’Savas with laughter in his eyes. “You smile!”

And Deanna looked to Mark with pride. “And she smiles because of you.”


	2. "The Icarus Factor"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A year after joining the Q Continuum, Deanna Troi and Will Riker happen to cross paths with the USS Enterprise at Starbase Montgomery. Will has a relationship to repair, but he's not the only one with reconciliation on his mind.

**Somewhere between Beta Kupsic and Starbase Montgomery**

**Stardate 42680**

In the year she had spent as an omnipotent member of the Q Continuum, Deanna Troi had maintained one seemingly-arbitrary rule: they had to appreciate the passage of time. Wherever they were, she insisted that they allow their bodies to feel the natural fatigue they would. They were to always eat meals, as long as those meals did not mean others went hungry. And they would always, if possible, travel from one place to another rather than instantaneously teleporting. 

Her Imzadi, William Riker, often asked her the same question. “Why are we doing this?”

“Because it matters, Will!” she always responded. 

This time, they were flying unprotected through space after having dissipated the radioactive cloud after an industrial accident on Beta Kupsic III. Dressed in a flowing blue dress, Deanna sped through the vacuum of space experiencing every last stray atom in the void. Stars streaked by and the dress flowed as if she was floating lazily through a dark ocean. “Besides, we’re moving at warp 9, is that not fast enough?”

Will Riker, wearing a very boring black shirt and gray pants, responded uselessly. “We could be there instantaneously.”

“But then we would miss things like…this!” Deanna reached out a hand above her head and snatched something out of the interstellar void. Someone had vented trash near this spot at some point in the past, and Deanna now held and empty bottle with a label proclaiming it “House of Ma’raQ, Bloodwine, Year of Kahless 935.”

Will looked a bit confused to see a bottle of Klingon bloodwine in the middle of federation space. “How do you think that got here?” he asked with mild curiosity. 

“We could always go and find out,” Deanna replied with some interest as well.

Will’s eyes turned forward at that moment and he sniffed at the void, distracted by something. “Do you smell that?”

Space, like everything, smells. There are atoms in the void that, when in air, give a particular scent to space. Some astronauts said it smelled like gunpowder, others like burned steak. Today, Deanna smelled something different. 

“Why yes... It smells like vanilla, but almost sugary sweet. Like candy?” Deanna puzzled at putting a name to the scent. 

“Exactly, we’re coming up on someone’s ion trail. Probably dropped out of warp to check something… there,” Will responded, pointing. 

Off in the distance, at the edge of their vision, a ship jumped to warp and disappeared. Another hulk remained floating where the first had disappeared. Will and Deanna looked at each other with a nod of commitment. If there had been a battle, or raid, or something of the sort it was now over. With their commitment to help victims of fate, but not to interfere in history, this was the time where they would allow themselves to act. The bottle of Bloodwine disappeared in a flash, becoming a puzzle for another day. 

They flew closer toward the ship and slowed from warplike speed. The ship belonged to a race that Riker couldn’t immediately identify, but the slowly venting atmosphere smelled like oxygen and nitrogen. The attacking ship had clearly left this behind. The two of them came toward the top of the ship and alighted upon it.

Will looked worried as he craned his head. “I don’t hear any distress signals.” 

Deanna nodded and began to walk over the hull. She came upon a buckle in the hull plating and placed her hand upon it. The fracture knitted itself, allowing the remaining atmosphere to stay within the hull. 

Moments later, with twin flashes of starlight, they were inside. At first blush, the halls appeared to be those of a ransacked freighter. It was a long-haul freighter that probably couldn’t make much more than warp five. Whoever had been after them had come and gone, taken what they wanted, and departed.

Space boomers no longer existed the same way they had in the days of early Human interstellar flight, but some species still had ships like this that housed trading families. Deep in the ship, far from the external hull, Will and Deanna heard crying. 

Another pair of flashes and they appeared in the cramped room. Power had been cut off and inside a single emergency torch illuminated three family members, a teenage son, a woman who appeared to be his mother, and a considerably older man. Only the man appeared to still be alive as he looked up at his saviors, his face streaked with rapidly-freezing tears. If life support was not restored, he would have died in minutes. 

“We couldn’t defend ourselves,” the man with a furrowed scalp said. Neither Deanna or Will recognized their race at first glance. “They were through our shields and the atmosphere was venting. I dragged them in here but they’re…”

“It’s all right,” Deanna said as she walked over to the two bodies. She placed a hand on the child’s forehead first and he gasped deeply as his eyes shot open. “We’ll take care of them and help you get to Starbase Montgomery.” 

Will touched the mother’s forehead and she reacted much the same way. She panicked as she returned to life and looked around. Her eyes landed on her son and she cried out with joy, throwing her arms around him, knocking Deanna out of the way. 

It still hadn’t gotten old, Deanna thought, as Will came up next to her and laced his fingers through hers. They watched the joyous reunion for only a moment before they got to the work of restoring the ship’s systems. 

**\----**

**Starbase Montgomery, Docking Bay**

“We just ask that you pay it forward,” Will said as he patted the grandfather on the shoulder. Two days of warp 5 flight had gotten them here later than they had anticipated, but it was worth it to make sure this family had gotten back on the right foot. The family exchanged pleasantries and headed off, and Will pulled a padd from thin air to hand to Deanna.

“You’ll never believe who’s on their way,” he said with a chuckle. 

Deanna looked down at the PADD and gave a short gasp and smiled “No...”

“They’ll be here in six hours,” Will said as he walked over to a large window onto the Starbase’s internal drydocks. He watched the freighter going through its undocking procedure. “I was talking to Tasha before we came to see the freighter off.” 

“Are you ready to see Picard?” Deanna asked, knowing he probably harbored some trepidation about the encounter. 

“No, but I doubt he’s ready to see me either,” Will said without turning around. He folded his hands behind his back and stood a bit straighter. “Still, it was nice of Beverly to give you the head’s up. I really want to smooth things over, I don’t like how I left it.”

“Subspace radio still works, you know,” Deanna replied, coming to stand next to him, hand on his shoulder. 

“I suppose I had wanted to do it in person and I knew he would be livid if I just showed up on board.” 

“He really thought the world of you, Will. Right up to the end, the last conversation I had with him. He still thought you were one of the finest officers in the fleet,” Deanna said, softly stroking his shoulder. 

Will let out a long breath at the soothing touch. “I hope he’ll let bygones be bygones. I said some hurtful things.”

“Neither of you said anything that bad,” she said, shaking her head. “I think it’s gotten worse in your memory. He’s a good man when he’s at his best, but he can be petty when he’s at his worst. And you were both in very stressful situations.”

Will turned his head to look at her as he continued talking. “I know that, but at the same time I--” Something caught his eye and he stopped mid-sentence.

“What?” Deanna asked, following his gaze to a salt-and-pepper man about Will’s height and breadth. He even carried himself with the same self-assured stride. The man met Will’s eye. 

“That’s my father.”

**\----**

**Starbase Montgomery, Bar**

“How did you know he was going to be here?” Deanna asked of Kyle Riker. Will had turned and left the moment his father got close enough to start a conversation. Deanna had heard enough stories of their estrangement, and had intercepted the older man with the charm and grace of someone who had dealt with the most revolting people in creation. Kyle Riker was far from that, but based on what she knew he could be just as bad.

“I have friends who have friends, it comes with the job,” the elder Riker said as he held a cup of coffee. If he had to be vetted by a beautiful woman to get to his son, that was a sacrifice he was willing to make. “When you and Will called saying you were bringing in that freighter, someone called me. I was close enough I knew I could get here before you left.”

“And what is it you want from Will?” Deanna queried, having ordered herself Valerian root tea.

“I came here to bury the hatchet with my son only to find out the ground was frozen solid,” he said with some frustration. Not even receiving a courtesy greeting was a very firm indication that Will’s opinion of him had not improved. 

“You don't seem to be the kind of man to give up so easily,” Deanna replied. She knew it to be the truth, she could easily sense Kyle’s determination. He wanted to make things right, but she could tell he didn’t know how.

“I didn't say I was giving up,” Kyle scoffed. “It would just be nice to get a little something from him.”

“And what is it that you want from him?” she asked again, a bit more urgently. She didn’t like it when patients avoided questions, let alone her Imzadi’s estranged father. 

“I don’t know, acknowledgement maybe?” Kyle was growing frustrated with the entire situation. 

“You want him to respect you,” Deanna intuited. 

“I don’t need his respect, I just want to have a conversation with my son.” Kyle even believed it when he said it. In truth, it bothered him to be ignored by Will more than anything else. Deanna felt a wave of envy escape the aging strategic consultant. 

“You covet his success!” She jumped on the idea, finally getting a sense of his true issue. “You would have envied him even if he was still with the  _ Enterprise _ but now--” 

“Please,” he scoffed again. “He’d have been lucky to have my career. I’d bet Will finds you pretty fascinating. Candor seems to be a trait he admires.”

“He prefers honesty,” she advised with a touch of her own frustration, “and you should be honest with yourself about why you’re still comparing yourself to him.” 

“Because we’re not so different,” Kyle answered abruptly. His tact, for all the good it did him in his career, didn’t hold up well to Betazoid intuition. “And if he’s going to spend the rest of his life performing feats of derring-do throughout the galaxy, I want to talk to him, all right?” He stood abruptly, curtly assuming she would pass on the message. “You have a good night Deanna, it was nice to meet you.”

**\----**

**U.S.S. Enterprise, Picard’s Ready Room**

“You seem to have a way of getting all your reunions out of the way at once,” Jean-Luc Picard mused as he strode from his replicator to his desk with a cup of tea. Will had politely declined a beverage. This meeting was somewhat easier to get than Will had anticipated. Tasha Yar, Will’s replacement as First Officer, had arranged it without a second word. For all the horror she had gone through when Q tested Will, she didn’t hold any of that against Will. Plus, she appreciated his thoroughness when she walked into his position with almost no friction.

“It seems that way,” Will responded, folding his hands over his right knee. “First thing’s first, sir. I have to apologize for the way I acted at Quadra Sigma. I was way out of line.”

Picard paused mid-sip and stared over the top of his mug of tea. “It’s ‘Sir’ again, is it?”

“I suppose it is. Seeing my father again reminded me…” He struggled with words sometimes. Even years with the emotional honesty of Betazoids couldn’t overcome how little he discussed feelings growing up. “...reminded me how much I liked it here.” 

“My own father wasn’t an easy man to get along with, Will, I can’t imagine you got through childhood any easier than I did.” Picard didn’t know the half of it, he had never had the time to get to know this Number One that closely. “At least I had my mother to get between us when the shouting started.”

“Thirteen years with him,” Will confessed. “It was a nightmare. I got out of there as soon as I could and I never looked back.” 

“And so then here he is, trying to make right, when he has nothing to offer and everything to ask.” Picard seemed to know the situation well. 

Will had never realized how much he and Picard had in common with fatherly struggles. “Does that sound a little like what I’m trying to do here?” 

The older man sighed and leaned back in his chair, placing his cup down. “Listen, Will. I was frustrated and I let it get the best of me. And the fact that Q cost me not one but two excellent officers made it even worse. On top of it…” He paused and looked around, as if he’s admitting something embarrassing. “I’d made a wager with him.”

“A wager?!” Riker exclaimed. “You made a bet with Q? What did you bet on?” His eyes narrowed in a moment of unwanted realization. “On me?”

“Exactly that,” Picard admitted with uncharacteristic modesty. “You know I’ve made some bad calls in my life,” he said, thumping his fist against his chest. Inside Jean-Luc Picard resided an artificial heart, a reward from an ill-advised fight with Nausicaans when he was just out of the Academy. 

Will knew the story from Picard’s file “I do,” he answered with a smirk.

“Well,” Picard continued “I wagered that if you rejected the power he offered, he would never bother humanity again.” 

“And if I kept them?”

“I would give up my command,” Picard admitted through lightly-gritted teeth, angling his head down a little bit.

Riker is incredulous. “Why would you do that?”

“I would have done anything to get rid of Q.” Picard paused, confused for a moment by names. “That Q. Farpoint Q, I suppose I should say. Should I call you Q now? Should I call Deanna Q, too?”

Will laughed genuinely at the digression. “No, our names are fine -- stop changing the subject!”

Picard sighed and launched into a story. “So once the three of you left, he came back and we had something of a chat.”

**\----**

**Picard’s Ready Room, Stardate 51599**

**One Year Earlier**

A flash of starlight on his couch sent a jolt through Jean-Luc’s body. He had long trained himself not to display shock and surprise, otherwise he would have gone shooting through the bulkhead. On his couch, dressed as a Starfleet Captain once again, was the Q entity he had first encountered on the Farpoint mission. His arms spread wide along the back of the couch as if to take up as much space as possible. Picard put down the PADD he was working on and glared across the small room.

“Come to gloat, Q?” Picard nearly growled the words.

Q seemed sheepish in his usual, elevated way. “Of course not,  _ mon capitane _ . How petty you must think I am. No, I wanted to let you know that my new brother and sister are settling in well and adapting to their new lease on existence.”

“And this has nothing to do with our wager?” Picard cut directly to the chase. The sooner he got to the point, the sooner this would be finished and he could get back to Tasha’s promotion to First Officer. 

“Wager, Jean-Luc?” Q’s face twisted into a wicked smile, the kind that usually comes with a knife. “I recall no wager.” 

Picard sighed and buried his forehead in his hands for a moment. “Q,” he began before gradually looking up, “you’ve deprived me of two senior officers in one day, I am quite sick and tired of these games.”

The smile dropped to a serious face in an instant. “Fine, then I will also be blunt, Jean-Luc. Your trial began at Farpoint, but it didn’t end there. Riker was just the next phase, and Troi going with him just expands the trial.” 

Picard openly sneered at the thought. Something about the dual meaning of “trial” just being another word for “test.” 

Q continued. “The Continuum will not be thrilled that I’m telling you this, but remember. I believe in you.”

“Believe in me?” Picard continued, never willing to accept even honesty from this Q. “I’m a Starfleet captain, I don’t have time to be the subject of test after test like some laboratory animal!”

Q sighed and removed his arms from the back of the couch. “Fine, don’t listen to me. I really do so much for you Picard, you don’t begin to comprehend...” And he disappeared in his flash of starlight. A second, smaller flash appeared on Picard’s desk revealing a PADD. As Picard began to pick it up, he heard Q finish his sentence. “...but you will.”

**\----**

**Picard’s Ready Room, present day**

Riker tried to interpret the conversation Picard had just recalled to him. “The Continuum doesn’t tell us a whole lot but we already had the feeling we’re under as much scrutiny as you are.” 

“If not more,” Picard added. “Regardless, I haven’t seen him since. If what he says is true and we’re all still on trial, I can’t think of a better way to testify than to live our lives guided by the best principles of Starfleet and the Federation.”

“Do you remember the old story about the Enterprise, the one they say goes all the way back to Pike?” Riker was something of a fan of old stories of Starfleet, though he preferred the earliest ones.

“There are a lot of stories about the Enterprise, Will,” Picard said, picking his tea up again.

“There’s a story that, during Burnham’s War, Starfleet Command kept the Enterprise out of harm’s way on purpose,” Riker smiled as he told the story. “When Pike asked why, he was told they needed the Enterprise, and her crew, to survive the war because they represented everything that was good and honorable about the Federation.” 

Picard gave a smile and genuine chuckle at the response. “Well, if the rest of the Q picked a ship to test, they couldn’t have picked a better one.” 

Riker joined his captain in a laugh.

**\----**

**Starbase Montgomery/U.S.S. Enterprise - Umbilical Bridge**

Finished with his meeting with Captain Picard, Will contemplated his next step. He and Deanna had taken quarters on the Starbase, and he felt like walking back. Part of the desire came from Deanna’s rule about traveling, but walking through the umbilical was always a relaxing experience for him. He loved being able to see the outside of the ship and the inside of the starbase from a point in between. This time, the view was immediately ruined by the appearance of a salt-and-pepper man walking his way. Will set his jaw and pretended not to see his father.

“Will!” called the elder Riker. Kyle was not ready to let this go. As Will passed him, Kyle turned to pursue him. “Will, it’s time for us to talk. Lower your shields.”

“I have nothing to say to you, so--”

“You know what, it’s a shame there’s no anbo-jyutsu ring nearby,” Kyle raged, staring at his son’s back.

Will froze and rounded on his father. Half a dozen other people were walking between the ship and starbase at the same time and started walking around the two of them. Even in the twenty-fourth century it seemed people wanted nothing to do with other people’s familial in-fighting.

“You really want that?” Will tilted his head back and glared down his nose toward his father.

“It would clear the air once and for all!” Kyle didn’t see an omnipotent Q before him, all he could see was his son. 

Will, for his part, didn’t forget he was omnipotent. “Fine!”

The crowd passing by them didn’t miss what happened next, when both men disappeared in flashes of starlight. 

**\----**

**Alpha Centauri**

**2168 C.E.**

Kyle Riker spun his head around to get an image of his bearings. He was outdoors standing on a raised circular platform under a yellow-orange sky. A drop from the edge of the platform led to a shallow pit, and around the perimeter were bleachers lined with a hundred people. Standing alone and apart from them all was a singular seat with a blind master looming over a narrow bridge across the pit.

Kyle looked over himself - he was wearing red armor lined with white fur, and in his hand was the unmistakable Anbo-Jyutsu pole with a range-activated sound sensor at one end and a padded cudgel at the other. 

The blind master rose and spoke a phrase Kyle recognized as introducing the second combatant. His son strode across the bridge confidently wearing white armor trimmed in red and carrying a matching pole It was instantly apparent that something was different.

“You’re blind!” Kyle exclaimed, seeing Will’s milky-white eyes.

“You want to settle things with violence? Fine. Here we are. You, me…” Will squared up across the arena from his father and raised his hand, and the last thing Kyle Riker saw was another flash of light. “...and no vision.” 

Kyle heard the sound of the bridge being raised behind them and panicked for a moment. What had he gotten himself into? He knew where he was. This could only be the first Anbo-Jyutso school on Alpha Centauri. The blind master was none other than Kathar Eltrin himself, the gymnast-turned-warrior who invented the sport. He then heard Will’s voice speak the greeting that started the match. 

The arena fell silent.

With a wicked smile, Kyle bowed and repeated the greeting and raised the sensor end of his staff in the direction he thought his son might be in. He listened intently for the scuffle of his son’s boot or the sound of his breathing. He swept the sensor end back and forth. 

His sensor sounded, then so did Will’s. Then silence, followed by the soft sound of the cudgel swinging through the air. Kyle stepped left and heard it woosh past his ear, then move into silence. Another woosh approached and he ducked - the cudgel passed over his head. 

This is all Kyle needed to know Will’s positioning. He swung his club in a circle toward the spot where his son must be standing and heard slice through the air. He made a second high, circular swing but still made no contact. 

Silence returned. He knew that he must have overshot the mark and began sweeping with the sensor end of the stick. He moved slowly, ever wary of the edge of the ring. Actual blindness was starting to unnerve him. Normally, he would peek down below his visor ever so slightly to catch sight of the illuminated edge of the ring. Now, he couldn’t do that. 

As the idea crossed his mind, he heard Will’s sensor sound. He spun toward it and aimed his own sensor into nothingness. He knew he was out of position. He swung wildly in a high then low circle and still struck nothing but sky. Will’s cudgel struck him firmly between the shoulder blades and he felt himself lose his stick as he fell face-first into the pit. 

“It should have been you who died, not her!” Will screamed in rage as Kyle struggled to his feet. Kyle felt attendants place his stick back in his hand and escort him back to the platform.

“Good, get it all out Will.” They bowed and repeated the ritual greeting. Kyle struck first this time. Will made wild swings and Kyle swung overhand. Instead of meeting Will’s body, he hit Will’s stick instead. Will yielded and rose. 

Kyle was panting now, “You were too young to understand, you lost a mother but I lost a wife. I was too hurt to explain.” 

“Hurt?!” Will was clearly returning to his position, and Kyle had enough sense to know where he was. “You were never too hurt for anything!” 

“All that kept me going was you, Will!” Kyle said, almost sounding devoted. The sentiment was belied by the tone. 

“You had a strange way of showing it!” Will growled back.

“I came here thinking we could talk this out. Maybe I’m not a father, but you’re no son of mine, and fighting is all we have left.”

Whatever rage Will was feeling didn’t stop him from repeating the ritual greeting, and Kyle repeated it and bowed almost without remembering. Kyle heard his son swinging wildly now and knew this Will very well. Kyle calmly retreated away from danger and slowly made a brutal upward swing toward the back of his son’s legs. Will’s solid form hit the platform and Kyle felt the ground tremble.

“Hachidan kiritsu!” The blind master’s voice rang across the arena, loud and disapproving. 

Kyle’s sight returned in an instant and Will looked up at him. 

Prone on the floor, Will began laughing ruefully in his father’s face. “You can’t win without cheating? After all this time?”

“You’re supposed to be omnipotent, how else was I supposed to beat you!”

“You’ve been using that move since I was twelve!” Will snapped back, shuffling to his feet.

“And even then I knew I couldn’t take you. I had to keep you challenged, didn’t I? Had to keep you interested?” 

Another flash of light enveloped them both. 

**\----**

**Starbase Montgomery/U.S.S. Enterprise - Umbilical Bridge**

The two men reappeared, squared off across the corridor. Their civilian clothes were restored. People walking across the bridge stopped in their tracks as the men continued their argument as if nothing had changed.

“That was it?” Will raged. “You had to cheat to keep me playing games with you!?”

“It was that or talk to you!” 

Will fell into shocked silence for a moment. 

Kyle sighed. “I was in mourning for a woman you barely remembered. And every year the wall between us just kept growing taller. I can talk to a room of Admirals about threats to the Federation, but I can’t talk to my son about my feelings.”

Will set his jaw and looked at him. An instant, to a Q, can be a lifetime. In that instant, Will thought through what it meant to love the woman that  _ he _ loved. Would he understand his own emotions if not for Deanna? What would he be like if he lost her? How would he have acted if she hadn’t been there when Q had tested him? The answer was very much like the man who stood across from him. 

“How do you feel, Dad?” Will asked, understandingly. 

“I feel pretty good for still being able to land hits on you even when you’ve got the powers of a god,” he chuckled. 

Will chuckled back as he walked toward his father. “Even if you had to cheat?” 

Kyle laughed and threw his arms round his son. “I love you, Will. I just wish it hadn’t taken me fifteen years to say it.” 

Will put his arms around his father and patted him on the back. Kyle released and looked up the corridor. “I’ve got to meet with somebody. Coffee in the morning? I ship out at 0900.” 

“I’ll let you know.”

**\----**

**Deanna & Will’s Quarters, Starbase Montgomery **

“He really said it?!” Deanna exclaimed. The man she’d met the day before was too haughty and proud to admit he loved his son. 

“He did, but damned if I’m going to say it back,” Well responded. She had been reclining on the bed looking out the window of their quarters when he came in and plopped his head in her lap. His long frame dangled off the side of the bed. 

“And you’ll have coffee with him?” 

“I suppose so,” Will sighed. He looked around the quarters and thought aloud. “These are really big for civilian quarters.”

**\----**

**Starbase Montgomery, Bar**

**The Next Morning**

Will and Kyle Riker had been talking over Raktajino about the threat posed by the Cardassian border raids for ten minutes when Jean-Luc Picard approached. 

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” the Captain said, holding a PADD in one hand.

“No, I was just about to head out,” Kyle said as he rose from his chair. He patted Will on the shoulder. “Be careful now, okay?” He started to walk away without another word. 

Will watched him go, then pushed out the chair for Picard. 

“I was hoping to see Deanna too,” he said as he settled down and ordered himself breakfast tea. 

Riker gave a wink and whispered something under his breath that Picard couldn’t make out. “She’ll be here in--”

Starlight flashed next to Riker and Deanna appeared with an arm wrapped around his waist and a smile for Picard. “Good to see you, Captain.” 

Picard didn’t like that flash, but seeing it from Deanna for the first time put him a bit more at ease and made him feel better about the choice he had made. He placed the PADD face up and slid it toward the couple. Deanna picked it up first and shook her head as she handed it to Will. 

“Why are you showing us this?” Deanna asked quizzically as Will read the information on the screen. She sensed an incongruous and disturbingly playful attitude from the Captain. It was their resignations from Starfleet. They had given the PADD to Q to deliver to Picard the year before. 

“Well, it’s customary to return a resignation that isn’t accepted,” Picard said flatly. He knew it was a stunning line and wanted it to have all the more impact. 

“What do you mean, Captain?” Riker was the one to question him this time. 

“Well, you two were good officers and I didn’t want to accept your resignations without having a conversation about them first. So I held onto them and, well, here we are.” Picard felt painfully clever about this explanation, and very proud of himself.

“We can’t be in Starfleet when we’re Q,” Deanna said. “It doesn’t make any sense. We’re not exactly team players.” 

“Maybe not,” Picard responded, “but there’s no rule against it. All species are welcome in Starfleet, and no one has ever been turned out because of who they are. And it shouldn’t be any different for you two.”

“Do you want us to report for duty?” Riker asked. He chafed under the idea, and was torn as to whether he should be calling this man Jean-Luc, or Captain, or Sir.

“No,” Picard laughed. “Tell me, do either of you recall who was captain of the Enterprise NCC-1701 after James Kirk?”

“Spock,” Riker responded immediately, with a tone that made his wrong answer seem obvious.

Deanna, however, gave the right answer. “Willard Decker.” She was fascinated by Starfleet long before Will Riker came into her life, and she cut her teeth on stories passed down from her father. 

Picard smiled. He missed having Deanna at his side sometimes. She sensed it, but had the courtesy to acknowledge it with only a warm smile.

“Right, Deanna,” Picard smiled. He continued his story but was clearly telling it to Riker. “Deckard was captain during a refit, and during the encounter with the V’ger probe he and their Deltan navigator merged with the probe and disappeared.” 

Will let the story go on. He didn’t know this one, and wasn’t entirely sure whether or not it involved whales.

“Long story short, Kirk didn’t declare them killed in action. He declared them missing. And so they remain today, over one hundred years later. And so I figure that if Kirk could do it,” Picard raised his chin proudly, “I could do it.” 

“So we’re missing?” Riker asked, feeling very certain he wasn’t lost. 

“No, but in accordance with Starfleet Regulation 2-0933-3443B, you have been granted indefinite leave at the discretion of the commanding officer of a Federation starship until such time as you see fit to resume your duties.” The regulation sounded very familiar Deanna -- it was the regulation used for personnel in mourning after the death of a loved one. 

“Sir, I appreciate it but I don’t think we’ll ev--” Riker started talking before Deanna jabbed him in the ribs.

“Thank you, Sir, we appreciate it,” she responded. 

Jean-Luc smiled back at these two amazing people. He didn’t need to speak his feelings, they knew how he felt. Wherever they went, whatever they did, they were part of his crew. And Captains of the Enterprise never left their crews behind. 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the first chapter, my mind kept thinking about what should happen next. While there is another chapter between the first and this, that one isn't quite ready. It deals with some issues that I need more help with.
> 
> I will likely continue with some other episodes from TNG through the lens of this AU, and may add some original stories in between. 
> 
> Thanks again to convenientmisfires for her input and editing, and for making me realize how much I enjoyed Riker/Troi as a ship from the first time I met them.


	3. "Manhunt"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A retelling of TNG s02E19 "Manhunt" in this AU where Will Riker and Deanna Troi have become Q in "Hide and Q" and Tasha Yar therefore doesn't die in "Skin of Evil." Featuring a very, very surprising ship that as of this writing is a first for AO3.

**Captain’s Ready Room, USS** **_Enterprise-D_ ** **, Stardate 41598**

**One Year Ago**

Jean-Luc Picard sat across his desk from Lieutenant Commander Data. In the very brief time they had served together, Picard had come to respect the Android’s abilities. Those abilities were not, Picard judged, suited to the task ahead. 

“With Commander Riker’s departure, I am aware that you will need a First Officer, sir,” Data continued. The reason he had been called into this room was obvious even to him. 

“And as second officer, do you assume that promotion should fall to you, Mr. Data?” Picard enquired. 

Data cocked his head, his eyes as childlike as always. “It is a logical conclusion, Captain, but it would not necessarily be the correct decision.”

“And why is that?” Picard asked. He was somewhat surprised that Data had come to the same conclusion he had.

“I have observed,” Data stated as if a foregone conclusion, “that the position of First Officer requires an amount of interaction with others. Commander Riker has what can be termed as ‘an abundance of personality.’ I lack that.” 

Picard chuckled sympathetically. “I wouldn’t say that you lack a personality, Data, you have more personality than some Starfleet officers I’ve met.”

“I do, however, understand that a First Officer needs to be a leader for the crew. Someone that they can and must be comfortable with going to for their needs. I do not think I can be that on a permanent basis, sir.”

“Because you lack an abundance of personality?” Picard asked.

“Because my personality, while efficient, may not serve morale.” Data said. From another person it would be an admission of limitation that came from soul searching. For Data, Picard believed, it was just the end of a path of deduction.

“And who would you recommend from among the crew as First Officer, then?” Picard hoped that Data would come to the same conclusion he did.

Data paused to calculate for a very, very long moment. Picard’s artificial heart would have skipped a beat if it could. Finally, Data spoke.

“I believe Lieutenant Yar would be an excellent choice for First Officer, Captain.” Data could see Picard let out a breath.

“And why is that?” Picard noted, folding his hands on the desk between them. 

“From my observations she appears to be widely liked by the crew, she is efficient in her duties, and is dedicated to Starfleet.”

Picard nodded and smiled. “You are an insightful man, Mr. Data. I had come to the same conclusions. As for her replacement as Chief of Security?”

“Lieutenant Worf would serve very capably in that position, Sir.” Data said without hesitation. 

“I agree again. You may be a better manager of people than you let on, Mr. Data. Are you sure that passing you over for this promotion won’t offend you?” Picard knew his mistake once the words were out of his mouth, but the moment had passed.

“I have no feelings to offend, Captain. I only intend to provide advice that is in the best interests of the  _ Enterprise _ .”

“Thank you for your honesty, Mr. Data. I would like you to remain for this.” Picard nodded and pressed the comm panel on his desk. “Lieutenant Yar to my ready room.”

**\----**

**Mintaka III, Stardate 42859.3**

**Present Day**

Two omnipotent members of the Q Continuum watched the flood waters abate. They sat, invisible to the Mintakans and their Federation stalkers alike, and continued their long debate on the ethics of their omnipotence. To each other, they appeared much as they always did. 

In the man’s eyes, his partner was Deanna Troi, his Imzadi, a being of deep emotion and understanding, and also a woman of strong convictions. She also had a tendency, when under stress for too long, to retreat to sensual pleasures. He quite enjoyed that aspect of her personality, and she would almost never express any guilt about indulging. 

In the woman’s eyes, William Riker was her Imzadi, a man who valued life above all, but a man who could succumb to his impulses when under stress. He was also someone who could easily dwell on his perceived failings. She found this humanized him, otherwise he could easily be seen as a two-dimensional strong-chinned hero. 

They had come when they had picked up transmissions from the local Federation observation post. Disasters were their calling cards in this first stage of their immortality. They would not let people perish to callous fate, but would not allow themselves to change history. It was just such a debate that had consumed them for the past hour.

“They’re victims of fate, Deanna,” Will said, looking out over the half-dozen who had perished. When the opportunity presented itself, Will was prepared to save any life.

“But look,” Deanna said, pointing at an approaching party of Mintakans. These people, just passing from the stone age into the earliest beginnings of the bronze age, appeared Vulcan but expressed much of the same passion of Romulans. 

“We can revive the dead from here,” Will said. “They never have to see us.”

“But they’ll see the dead rise and wonder why.” Deanna said, flatly. “These people have abandoned a notion of gods not all that long ago. What would our action be other than the work of gods to them?”   


“It could just be good luck,” Will argued. 

“They're rational people, Will,” Deanna said. She didn’t like to leave people to die. In fact, the first thing she wanted to do upon becoming Q was to bring life back to the lifeless. It was her, however, that had first suggested that they form these rules -- what she thought of as The Ethics of Omnipotence. “They’ll try to figure out why their family members survived. And when they find that there’s no apparent explanation for what happened…”

“They’ll have no choice but to attribute it to an act of god,” Will sighed. He was as loathe to play god as she was. “But what’s so wrong about having a god?” He looked over at her with a wink. “Or gods?” 

“Nothing inherently,” Deanna admitted, “But when you abandon reason for faith, it can lead to horrible consequences. We can’t know that they will temper that faith with reason. As much as they’re like Vulcans, they have a very strong Romulan emotional streak in them.”

Will paused for a long moment. “I suppose you’re right. The good we would do could be outweighed by the damage to their society. It’s the responsible thing to d--”

Deanna looked to Will as he cut himself off, then she heard it too. On subspace, orders transmitted to the  _ Enterprise _ . Her dark, colorless eyes went wide as she looked at him. “Oh no. They’re not ready for that.”

“We’ll never get there in time. Not even at warp.” Another of Deanna’s guidelines was that they should, whenever possible, travel through space rather than instantaneously. 

Deanna shook her head vigorously at this suggestion. “There’s only one way we can get there before she does.” She offered her hand. She committed to coming back here another time, to see if they had been right. 

For now, though, Will Riker took her hand and they disappeared in twin flashes of starlight. 

**\----**

**Bridge of the USS** **_Enterprise_ ** **-D, departing Antede III**

**Stardate 42859.1**

“Captain,” Lieutenant Worf said looking down from the elevated tactical station, “we are being hailed by a small transport vessel, just coming into range.” 

Standing in the command well with the Captain was Lieutenant Commander Natasha Yar. After a year in Command Red, she was as comfortable in front of the bridge’s curved railing as she had been behind it. They had just come up from receiving two Antedean delegates bound for a diplomatic conference to the planet Pacifica. 

Tasha hastened to her seat and studied the call. “It’s a diplomatic channel, Captain.” 

“On screen,” Picard ordered. 

A very harried looking young ensign appeared on screen. “Enterprise, I have a passenger. A VIP passenger who I'm ordered to--” 

Onto the screen emerged Lwaxana Troi. The face was familiar to all on the bridge, having visited the ship the year before, a short time before Deanna’s departure for the Q. 

“Oh, let me talk to them. I’m sure I’m more articulate than that,” she said. 

Between Picard and the screen, Data spoke up. “We are receiving Starfleet orders granting Lwaxana---” 

Lwaxana was not one to allow herself to be announced. “Lwaxana Troi, Daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed.” She rattled off the titles as if they were second nature. They weren’t boastful to her, they were simply her name. 

“--full ambassadorial status, Sir,” Data finished, unfazed. 

“Another message coming in, Captain,” Worf said before anyone else could get in another sentence edgewise. 

“Who is it  _ now _ ?” Picard said, somewhat testily. 

“Patience, Jean-Luc,” Ambassador Troi said. “There’s no reason to be angry, I’m sure that--” 

“It’s Deanna,” Tasha said from her station. 

That piece of news silenced even the Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx. 

**\----**

**Transporter Room**

“I don’t know why they want to come aboard like this,” Chief Petty Officer Miles O’Brien said from behind his raised console. Captain Picard and Commander Yar had just entered the room dressed in the maroon greatcoats of their dress uniforms. Tasha nervously wrung her hands together, glad the other two in the room were focused on the platform. Off to one side of the room stood two piscine-looking Antedeans and a sealed barrel of their food. 

“I suspect it’s for my comfort, Chief,” Picard admitted. 

“Commander Riker and Counselor Troi are requesting permission to come aboard,” O’Brien noted. “Are they going to beam themselves over, sir?”

“Signal them welcome, Chief, and I’m sure they’ll take care of it on their own,” Picard said. No sooner had the confirmation been sent than two flashes appeared on separate transporter pads. As quickly as the flashes came they were gone, revealing Will and Deanna. Will smiled down from the platform and Deanna came down ahead of him.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t get here sooner, Captain,” Deanna apologized. “I didn’t want you to have to deal with her on your own.”

“I can certainly handle her, Counselor, have no fear of that,” said the confident Picard. He had no idea how unprepared he was, but no sooner had he said that than Tasha approached Deanna.

Tasha relaxed her hands and approached Deanna. The two women smiled and Tasha threw her arms around Deanna. Deanna reciprocated happily. “I’m so glad to see you,” Tasha said into Deanna’s ear. Tasha was certain this wasn’t a breach of decorum since Deanna was still technically on leave.

Unbothered by the hug, Riker descended from the transporter pad and shook hands with the Captain and Chief, letting them both know he was happy to see them again. 

Tasha and Deanna let go and turned to face the platform as O’Brien informed them that Ambassador Troi was ready to come aboard. 

Lwaxana Troi materialized facing forward on the very first transporter padd. No sooner had she materialized than Lwaxana sprang down the two stairs to embrace her daughter. 

_ Little One, you have no idea how much I missed you _ , Lwaxana said directly into her daughter’s mind. Deanna held her back, somewhat confused for a moment. 

After a moment, Deanna relaxed into the hug and answered her mother back aloud for the benefit of the others in the room. “I missed you too mother.”

With that, Deanna was released from her second tight embrace in as many minutes as Lwaxana turned to look up and down Picard. The greatcoat stopped just below the knee, leaving very well-toned calves visible in black hose. “Well, well, well. Jean-Luc, I wasn't aware you had such handsome legs.” 

Picard blanched for a moment and looked at Deanna as if she could save him. She did by looking to the transporter pad and intervening. “Where is your valet, Mother?”

“He’s waiting, you may beam him aboard now,” commanded the Ambassador, as if she could give orders to Chief O’Brien. For his part, O’Brien’s sense of self-preservation told him to do whatever she asked. 

The immensely tall Mr. Homm materialized behind a golden oval suitcase as large as Lwaxana. “I retain his services despite the outlandishly lustful thoughts he spews in my direction.” Unmoved by the airing of his personal thoughts, or perhaps because she was merely exaggerating, he moved to lift the case. “You can put that down, Homn. We can't deny the Captain the honour of carrying my belongings.”

Picard remembered his inability to move the case on her previous visit and demurred. “I will not interfere with Homn's duties this time.” 

Tasha, feeling that the moment was diplomatically important, began to stride up the stairs. “Ma’am, since this is obviously significant to you I would be happy to--” Tasha stopped the moment she tried to lift the case. It barely budged and she released the handle. She looked at the large valet. “I’m sorry, I obviously overestimated my strength.”

Homm bowed to Tasha and lifted the case with ease as Lwaxana’s eyebrows arched, impressed at Yar’s attempt. “Well, that is very sensible of you Ms…” 

“Lieutenant Commander Tasha Yar, ma’am. We met at the reception on your last visit. I’m Captain Picard’s First Officer,” she said, introducing herself. 

Picard was somewhat embarrassed about forgetting to introduce Yar himself, but he gave himself a pass. Lwaxana could put him off-balance.

The small party exited out of the transporter room with Picard and Yar leading the way, Will and Deanna flanking Lwaxana behind them, and Homm and the suitcase bringing up the rear. 

As they walked silently, Lwaxana sent her thoughts into her daughter’s mind again.  _ And what of him, Little One _ **,** clearly indicating Riker.  _ Is he still yours, what with your adventures across the universe? _

_ He is certainly not yours, Mother _ , Deanna thought back. Will, for his part, knew something was afoot. He could have listened in on their thoughts, but when with other humans he limited himself to human abilities. Deanna likewise did not typically expand her powers when in her mortal form, but still retained her Betazoid senses.

Lwaxana also took a glance up and down Tasha’s strong feminine form.  _ What of that one? _ she thought to Deanna. Deanna looked back at her, shocked into silence both aloud and in her mind.  _ What? _ Lwaxana asked.  _ She is by far the most sensible Starfleet officer I’ve met since your father. _

**\----**

**Diplomatic Quarters**

Yar excused herself at the door of Lwaxana’s quarters, and Picard left moments later after being reminded of an ambassadorial function the Ambassador was holding that evening. 

The moment Picard left, Lwaxana looked at Riker. “You can go too.”

Will smiled with his eyes in a somewhat surprised way. He gave a polite bow and backed out the door with a glance to Deanna. If they needed to speak, they could do so instantaneously. 

Finally alone with her daughter, Lwaxana laid into her daughter.

“What did you think you were doing, becoming some kind of all-powerful hero and galavanting off across the universe!?” She advanced on the younger woman, so much so that Deanna retreated three steps in shock. Lwaxana put off waves of concern and worry despite her outward anger. 

“Eighteen months! I haven’t heard two words from you in eighteen months!” Lwaxana continued, tears coming to her eyes. She wasn’t even trying to guard her thoughts and emotions, and the worry and concern melting into relief crashed down heavily on them both. 

Deanna swallowed hard and nodded. It was an extraordinarily long time for them to not speak. “I suppose I lost track of time, Mother,” she said sheepishly. For once, Deanna knew she was in the wrong when it came to her mother. 

“I should think so, saving lives across the Federation,” Lwaxana said, starting to come back to herself. She retreated back to a table Mr. Homm had finished setting up with her mirror. Her demeanor calmed noticeably, and the emotions in the air began to disperse like mist at dawn. She dabbed away the tears that had formed at the corner of her eyes. 

“I should apologize,” Deanna conceded. “We try to pay attention to the passage of time but there is so much to do and see that it becomes overwhelming.”

“You’re all over the news holos, you know that?” Lwaxana asked as she regarded her hair in the mirror. “You’re now the most famous member of the Fifth House since….”

“You, of course,” Deanna joked. Her mother did have an ego, and it didn’t hurt to feed it. Lwaxana preened in her mirror with a smile.

“Picard,” Lwaxana said, turning the topic back to the man who had just left. “He's a fine man. Solid, reliable. He's a little on the stuffy side but, all in all, he's not that bad.” 

“I can’t believe,” Deanna said exasperated as she settled into a chair, “that you’re measuring him like a commodity.”

“That’s what potential mates are, Little One. Especially humans. But was your father  _ ever _ unhappy with me?”

“No,” Deanna mused. Her mind went back to the kind eyes and warm love of her father. It’s one thing for a human to be told that they are loved, it’s something very different for a Betazoid to feel a parent’s unconditional love. After seeing the struggles of Will and his father she had thought of her own father more and more. “He worshipped you. I don’t think I’ll ever understand that feeling.”

“Modesty doesn’t become us, Little One. You could be a goddess if you wanted,” Lwaxana smiled as she regarded her daughter. A wave of motherly love enveloped Deanna like the warmest hug. “And your worshippers would be lucky to have you.”

**——**

**Ten-Forward**

Will Riker wasn’t quite sure what to do with his time while on the  _ Enterprise _ . Other than a brief trip to the captain’s Ready Room while they were all at Starbase Montgomery he hadn’t been back to the ship since he had left to join the Q. He could have sat around in his quarters. Tasha had assigned him and Deanna separate quarters, and even then he assumed Deanna and Lwaxana would have plenty to talk about. 

Will wandered his way toward Ten Forward. It had been an event space on the original plans of the ship but had changed in the past year. Like most  _ Galaxy _ -class starships, the  _ Enterprise _ eventually converted this space into a multipurpose crew lounge and bar. 

The large wood-and-glass double doors slid open for him and Will stepped into Ten Forward for the first time. They were moving at warp and the large curved windows gave the impression of flying unaided through space. If he didn’t have the power to personally fly through space at warp speeds, he would have been very impressed. 

It was mid-afternoon by this point and the space was relatively empty. Will made his way toward a table by the windows but just stopped and stared out. He could have been very happy in this room, he thought. He would have spent endless hours here with friends. He would have done work here. He would have escorted diplomats here. But this wasn’t his home anymore.

As Riker ruminated, a woman came up to his left elbow. She spoke to him in a voice filled with concerns. 

“You’re not going to make trouble here, are you, Q?” she said. Will looked at her and didn’t know the face or the voice, and was surprised to be addressed as Q by a member of this crew. His silence made her speak a second time. “All that power, and you lack the power of speech?”   


“Guinan,” Will said, remembering the name Picard had mentioned. “You’re Captain Picard’s friend.”

Guinan looked back at him and sized him up as if she was trying to determine what to make of him. She knew who he was, of course. Every time he or Deanna would surface and do something they would be the talk of the bar. She felt like she’d heard enough to have an idea of him. 

“I know who you are, and I know what you are,” she said in a stern yet welcoming tone. “And I know that you can all be trouble. So I need you to tell me,  _ Will Riker _ ,” she stressed his mortal name, “if you’re going to be trouble.” 

“Would you ask Deanna that if she’d come in here before I did?” He asked, turning to face her. 

“And I’ll ask her when she does come in. You still haven’t answered the question. It’s not making a good first impression,” she stressed. 

Will laughed, “I can see why he likes you. I won’t make trouble, you have my word. I’m not like other Q.” 

“We’ll see about that,” she said with trepidation. And then, her instinct to welcome people took over. Her tone shifted to something more businesslike. “Anything I can get you from the bar?”

**\----**

**Deanna’s Quarters**

Deanna contemplated the small quarters she had been assigned. Her back was to the door, and she looked out the low angled windows. She missed her former quarters. It was Tasha who handled room assignments, of course. That was part of the many thankless bureaucratic tasks that any First Officer had to endure. 

She took a deep breath and opened her mind. It was good to feel this place again. There was always something special about a place like this. More than a ship, it was a small community. A village travelling between the stars. She felt so many familiar people, waves of emotions that had changed so much yet so little in the past year-and-a-half. She turned to sit down on the edge of her bed, intending to bathe in the feeling for a few hours. 

The door to the small room chimed, interrupting her moment. 

“Come,” she said, and the door opened softly to reveal Tasha Yar. Deanna rose from the bed to hug her so tightly she had to remember that mortals were fragile. Not that Tasha was particularly fragile. Tasha returned the hug with her own strength. Deanna offered her a chair but Tasha demurred.

“I wish I could stay, I have bridge duty,” she said almost sadly. “I just wanted to come by and make sure you had settled in.” 

Deanna sat back down on the edge of the bed and tucked her legs beneath herself, before folding her hands in her lap. “It’s nice to have someplace private, I’m glad you had the room to spare.”

“Think nothing of it, I’ll have someone come by with your belongings. We had your things put into storage after you left,” she said as if it was someone else who had made the decision. In fact it was her decision. Knowing that there were places as familiar as Deanna’s quarters here that sat empty would have brought up difficult memories from youth. No, best to put them in storage for when they returned. Abandoned quarters reminded her too much of the friends she had lost. Storage units felt much more like friends who would return. 

“That’s very thoughtful, thank you,” Deanna cheerfully replied. “But why are you on bridge duty now?” she mused. “This used to be the Captain’s shift.” 

“He has some diplomatic reception with your mother,” Tasha shrugged. “Nobody else seemed to be invited, though.”

Deanna gasped and covered her mouth. It was worse than she realized. Tasha looked puzzled at the reaction. 

“What is it?” the First Officer asked.

“Have you ever heard of The Phase?” Deanna asked.

Of course Tasha hadn’t. She was many things. She was resourceful, reliable, and utterly indefatigable in her duties and commitments. She was a champion at Parrises Squares, master of three different martial arts, and was Academy runner-up in Velocity in her senior year. She was a crack shot, a decent hand with communications, and utterly reckless with her personal safety. None of those things was an anthropologist. 

“No,” Tasha answered simply.

“It's something that occurs to Betazoid women as we enter mid-life. It's only at mid-life that we become,” Deanna actually began to blush, ever so slightly, “well, fully sexual, if you know what I mean.”

Tasha’s eyebrows arched. “You mean--”

“No!” Deanna jumped on the idea. “What I’m just saying is that I should probably warn him. We came here to run interference in case she got out of hand and that’s what’s about to happen.”

“I think it’ll be fine, Deanna,” Tasha reassured her. “He can take care of himself, and who knows. He might actually like her more than he lets on.”

“I’m afraid she was too much for him even before The Phase,” Deanna said as she wrung her hands.

Tasha crossed the small room and put a hand on Deanna’s shoulder. “You’re her daughter, and I’m his First Officer. We both have obligations to them, but none of them is to stop them from having awkward dinners. They’ll be fine. And who knows? It might just work out for the best.” 

**\----**

**Captain’s Ready Room**

**The Next Morning**

“I have never had a more awkward meal my entire life,” Picard shared with Deanna, Will, and Tasha. He had summoned Deanna and Tasha to this meeting just after breakfast. Will had tagged along on his own, but no one bothered to object. The falling-out that he and Picard had experienced had been patched up and they were getting along quite well. 

Picard sat behind his desk, holding his large crystal paperweight in his hands. He didn’t need papers weighed down, of course, but it gave him something to channel his frustrations into at the moment. Deanna and Will sat on the couch under the panoramic painting of the  _ Enterprise _ , while Tasha sat to the couch’s right in the desk chair so Picard could talk to all of them at once.

“It became so awkward with her trying to make advances every sentence that I called Data and had him discuss anomalous chemical composition of brown dwarf stars for half an hour,” he seemed exasperated. “She finally made some diplomatic excuse and Data and I were able to escape. I tell you, Deanna, her senses left a lot to be desired.”

“Her telepathic prowess is second to none, Captain, except for now,” Deanna said. As much as Deanna felt bad for him, she was not about to let this man insult her mother. “You see, she’s undergoing a physiological phase. It’s something all Betazoid women undergo as we enter mid-life.”

Will remembered this and chimed in excitedly. “It’s something Deanna warned me about when we first started to see each other. A Betazoid woman, when she goes through this phase, quadruples her sex drive.”

“Or more,” Deanna said under her breath.

“Or more?!” Tasha and Will answered back as one. The two of them exchanged a silent look before looking at Deanna.

“I didn't want to frighten you,” Deanna said demurely. A stunned and rather inappropriate silence hung in the air before Deanna spoke up again.

“There are plenty of options for coping with the increased sex drive, of course.”

“Isolation?” Will shot back. Deanna glared at him, and Tasha raised her eyebrows at Will’s response. Clearly the comment didn’t land well, and Picard noticed the interplay. 

Deanna, however, was in no mood to correct Will right now. Her mother was going through a very complicated time in her life and she was committed to getting these people to understand. “For a widow of her rank there are only certain options that are considered dignified. She can’t just go off to Risa until it passes, nor can she be seen to deny her body’s needs.” 

“So she’s decided to date the Captain?” Tasha asked, putting the pieces together.

“Not just date him, Tasha,” Deanna explained with utter candor. “She intends to marry him.”

“Marry me!?” Picard exclaimed. 

“Congratulations, Jean-Luc!” Riker exclaimed with a half-laugh. 

“Yes, Captain,” Deanna responded. “In her mind you’re not only a suitable match but your station is more than acceptable given her rank in society.” 

“There must be some way to avoid offending her, sir,” Tasha added, already starting to put things together.

“Indeed, Number One,” Picard responded. Riker looked confused for a split-second. It was the first time he’d heard Picard call someone else Number One. But that wasn’t his post anymore, and it wasn’t his place. For the first time, William Riker missed something of his past life. He didn’t have time to reflect, however.

“Under the circumstances,” Picard continued, “I think it would be prudent to make myself less available for the remainder of the journey to Pacifica.” 

“We could send you somewhere relaxing, sir,” Deanna offered. She wasn’t usually one to just offer gifts using her powers. This time, though, she felt obligated. “It’s the least we can do, and I doubt that you have taken any time to relax lately.” 

“Reasonably so. I suppose a relaxed captain is good for the ship's morale. Do you think you can handle things, Number One?” Picard asked. He wouldn’t have promoted Tasha if he had ever doubted her ability to command this ship. She had most of the skills for this job when he had offered it to her. It had taken her a little time to understand the inertia of such a massive vessel in a combat situation, but she put days in the holodeck training for that situation. 

“I’ll have them bring you back the moment there’s trouble,” she said.

Jean-Luc Picard scoffed. “There will be trouble, there’s no doubt of that where Mrs. Troi is involved.” 

“Ambassador,” Deanna snapped at him. It wasn’t intended to be mean, but it was far more curt than was typical of her. Even in trying situations, Deanna prided herself on being diplomatic. She did not like this second show of disrespect from Picard.

“Pardon?” Picard responded. He hadn’t even made the conscious decision to call her “Mrs. Troi.”

“Ambassador Troi, ” Deanna responded, her tone softening. “I know she is a handful even at the best of times, but she is an ambassador. If it seems that you are actively disrespecting her it could become a diplomatic incident.” 

Picard’s eyes went a little wider. “Perhaps it is best that I go sooner rather than later, then.”

“Perhaps so,” Deanna replied in a polite monotone. 

**\----**

**Diplomatic Quarters**

“What ship's business takes precedence over the Ambassador from Betazed?!” Lwaxana was livid, but unsurprised. That little show at dinner the other night made it clear that Picard had no interest in her. A true shame, that. He would have been an ideal match.

“He didn’t tell me, Mother,” Deanna answered. It wasn’t a lie in much the way that Vulcan’s “didn’t lie.” She and Tasha had left Will and the Captain in the ready room to make their decision and leave. He told Will, certainly, but Deanna didn’t know where he went. 

She had come in to deliver the news only to interrupt her mother’s breakfast. A wide variety of replicated Betazed dishes were laid out in front of her, but Deanna could tell from the color that the uttaberry jam was real. “But there are dozens of things happening on a starship that can pull him away, even on a mission as simple as this.”   


“Fine,” Lwaxana conceded, tossing a fork onto her nearly-empty breakfast plate. “There are other alternatives.”

“Alternatives?” Deanna responded, nervous. 

“Have no fear, Little One. Your mother has the situation well in hand.” 

**\----**

**Kurl, Third Dynasty**

**12,000 years ago**

Jean-Luc Picard bounded up the potter’s hill like an excited schoolboy. Will Riker dragged himself up three steps behind like the obliged chaperone he was. 

“...and designed ceramic objects that were three hundred years ahead of their time,” Picard expounded breathlessly.

“Uh huh,” Will acknowledged.

“And we don’t know the artist’s name! To this day, all we know of them is their work!” 

“Fascinating,” Will droned. 

Jean-Luc, however, didn’t care that Will wasn’t excited. “I hope to witness the creation of a Naiskos. You see the Kurlan civilization believed that an individual was a community of individuals. Inside us are many voices, each with its own desires, its own style, its own view of the world.”

“Really,” Will noted.

“Oh yes, indeed. We’ve seen only a handful intact Naiskoi, and to be there when one is actually created? Wouldn’t it be thrilling!?”

“Breathtaking,” Will said, staring at the back of the sprightly aging man ahead of him. 

Deanna owed him one….

**\----**

**U.S.S.** **_Enterprise_ ** **-D, Bridge**

**Present Day**

The side chairs on the bridge’s command well were typically for officers on duty. However, since they were in the middle of a taxi run, Tasha had invited Deanna to her old seat for the shift. They all caught up during the uneventful shift, but mostly it was Deanna regaling them with stories of disasters prevented and lives narrowly saved. She was every bit the mysterious stranger of her youth, and she loved every moment of it. 

Deanna did not love it when she saw her mother emerge from the bridge’s fore turbolift with Mr. Homm behind her left shoulder. 

“Natasha, I feel that it is time to make our announcement,” she said to the entire crew. Most of the crew was on pins-and-needles, but Deanna was waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

“Our ann--” Tasha started before being cut off.

“Dear friends. You are all invited to a prestigious occasion on the planet Pacifica,” Lwaxana began.

_ Mother, _ Deanna thought furiously at her mother,  _ what are you doing _ ?

_ Everything will be fine, Little One _ , Lwaxana responded in her mind. 

“There, on the shores of the Western Sea,” she said in a wistful tone “in a traditional Betazoid ceremony, your Lieutenant Commander Yar and I will be joined in the union of matrimony.” 

“Married?” asked Wesley Crusher from the helm. 

“Until death us do part,” Lwaxana said, looking at Tasha from across the bridge. Tasha stayed rooted in the command chair. She hadn’t expected to receive a marriage proposal this shift. 

“I know how you feel, dear,” Lwaxana addressed Tasha. “You're overwhelmed with excitement. Believe me, I understand. We'll talk about the details later. Right now, there are preparations to be made.” She and Homm turned in place and walked directly back into the turbolift.

Deanna began to rise from her chair and Tasha put a hand on Deanna’s shoulder. Deanna stopped and collapsed back into the seat.

“Why are you stopping me,” Deanna responded quickly. “She’s getting out of hand!”

Tasha just looked at the turbolift door and said, “I just haven’t been proposed to before.”

**\----**

**Ten-Forward**

Deanna and Tasha sat across from each other at a table by the front windows of the lounge, each with a relatively fancy drink in front of them. The waiter had been very quiet, and Guinan had watched them like a hawk from the moment Deanna walked in. The topic, however, wasn’t Guinan.

“You can’t be seriously thinking of going through with it!” Deanna said, exasperated at Tasha’s apparent consideration of the proposal.

“And what if I am?” Tasha replied, apparently taking the situation seriously.

“There are just…” Deanna was at a loss for words. “There are so many reasons this is a bad idea!”   


“Why? My career? Or is it because she’s way out of my league?” Tasha responded playfully. 

“No! I mean you can’t---” Deanna wasn’t allowed to complete her sentence as Tasha cut her off.

“Is it because you don’t want to call me Mother?” She winked back. 

Deanna gasped, mock appalled, and tossed her napkin at Tasha who responded with laughter.

It was this moment that Guinan finally crossed the room toward them. “You’re not making trouble in here, are you Q?” 

Deanna was as surprised to be called Q as she was to be chided. She looked at Guinan with a little bit of guilt. “Sorry, I suppose I should have said hello when I came in.” 

“What are you two talking about?” Guinan asked, as if she didn’t already know. 

“My mother proposed marriage to Tasha,” Deanna said, looking back at the first officer seated across from her. “And she seems to be actually taking it seriously.”

“Why are you taking it seriously?” Guinan asked Tasha as the bartender slid into the third chair at the table. 

Tasha looked down at her drink, momentary playfulness replaced with contemplation. “I don’t know, I probably shouldn’t be. It feels very flattering to be proposed to by someone like that,” Tasha admitted.

“Like what?” Guinan asked, obviously interested. She was a listener, always, but active listening required interaction. Deanna was just as interested in the answer.

“You both know how I grew up, right?” Tasha didn’t need to repeat the brutal nature of Turkana IV to her companions, who merely nodded. “Well, someone like Ambassador Troi would have been beyond imagination back then. She’s glamorous, she’s elegant, she’s…” She trailed off as she kept looking at her glass.

“She’s everything you wish you could be?” Guinan asked. That hit a nerve, but Deanna gave a mild nod of agreement. 

“It’s not that I really want to be like that, but…” Tasha kept openly grappling with her thoughts. “I always used to think that allowing myself to be feminine put me in danger. Make me vulnerable.” She looked up at Deanna. “You taught me that isn’t true.” 

“And what about Ambassador Troi, then?” Guinan asked, leading the conversation.

“She’s unbreakably strong and unrepentantly feminine,” Tasha said. “Since my promotion, I’ve felt like I can’t let myself be feminine anymore. It’s as if I internalized something about femininity being weak.” It was true, Tasha admitted to herself. Deanna sensed a wave of grief and fear stemming back to Tasha’s youth. 

“Is that why you’re considering it?” Deanna asked, finally. 

Tasha sat silent, trying to compose an answer. Was it the old instinct to seek a provider? It couldn’t be as simple as wanting to be with someone glamorous. Tasha was at a loss to explain why she felt she could accept the proposal.

It was Guinan who broke the silence. “Well, I’ve been married twenty-three times so I think I know more about marriage than your average person.” She folded her hands on the table and Deanna and Tasha looked at her. “And whether I was the one doing the proposing or accepting a proposal I always knew what I was doing was right. If it didn’t feel right, I knew that there was only one person that could help me answer the question.”

Tasha sat up straighter and looked at Deanna, their eyes meeting. 

Deanna again spoke first. “Do you want me to come with you?” she asked. 

Tasha shook her head. “No, I think my fiancée and I should talk in private.”

**\----**

**Diplomatic Quarters**

“Come in, come in my beloved!” Lwaxana cried as Tasha came in the door. She was draped in a dress that left both nothing and everything to the imagination, yet was as elegant as the Daughter of the Fifth House deserved. She shooed Mr. Homm out of the room and retreated to an armchair in the sitting area. “Sit, sit, we have so much to talk about!” 

Tasha was trembling slightly as she settled into another chair. It didn’t go unnoticed by the well-trained telepath, regardless of her current condition.

“Ambassador Troi, I--”

“Please Natasha,” she said, gently, “Call me Lwaxana.”

“L-Lwaxana, I…”

“Take your time, dear,” Lwaxana coaxed gently.

Tasha took several deep breaths. She would rather be in a firefight right now. Or staring down a Capellan power-cat. Or anything but discussing her feelings with an imposing woman of noble bearing who appeared to think the world of her. A Velocity match would feel so much simpler.

“Lwaxana, I’m so flattered by your proposal. More flattered than you can ever know.” Tasha spoke slowly, thinking as she spoke. Lwaxana sat there and listened, her dark colorless eyes taking in everything about the officer across from her. “But I don’t think I’m in a place where I could be married. To you or to anyone.”

Lwaxana appreciated honesty, especially as a Betazoid. “My people have a way with candor,” she said, “and you coming to me rather than running or hiding means so much.” She offered a hand to Tasha, which Tasha took.

“There are a lot of things in my past,” Tasha said, “a lot of things from growing up where and how I did, that I still never dealt with.” She looked at Lwaxana’s hand rather than her face. She didn’t want to meet those eyes. “I don’t think I could be ready to be with anyone until I worked through those things.” 

Lwaxana gave a sad but loving smile. “I can appreciate that,” she said honestly. “Would you be willing to share that with me?”

“I don’t know how I can put it into words, I’ve thought about it for so long and I’ve never…” Tasha trailed off, never letting go of the hand. 

“I can touch your mind,” Lwaxana said gently, “if you’ll let me. It’s not quite what the Vulcans do, but it would help me understand you, and it could help me share some of your burdens.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Tasha said as she looked up into Lwaxana’s deep eyes. 

Tasha felt Lwaxana’s mind wrap around hers like the warmest hug she’d ever received. Deanna had touched her mind in the past, but Lwaxana was fully Betazoid and trained in the use of her telepathy. The feeling was mostly emotions and words without images. Tasha radiated fear, terror, and privation. The feeling of a child who starved herself rather than risk her -- or her sister -- coming to harm. Lwaxana felt it all, and shared back the greatest love that she had felt in her life. 

Lwaxana gave Tasha the happiest feeling she knew. The feeling of a child in the womb, the feeling of peace and contentment that people spent the remainder of their lives chasing. Tasha let out a sigh of peace unlike any she had experienced in her life. 

It was only then that Tasha realized her eyes were closed. She opened them to discover Lwaxana had taken both hands in her own, and was kneeling on the floor in front of her with a sad smile.

“You’re right, Natasha, this isn’t right for you at this time,” she said with endless compassion and understanding. Tasha looked down and teared up, letting her emotion come freely for the first time in recent memory.

Lwaxana stood and leaned over Tasha, holding the human’s head to her shoulder. “It’s all right, let it out.”

“I’m sorry,” Tasha said through soft tears. “I’m never like this.” 

“The fact that you’re willing to be like this with me is one of the reasons I would have been proud to marry you,” Lwaxana said. “You have so many more layers to you than you understand. One day, I hope you will know yourself as much as you deserve.”

Tasha wrapped her arms around Lwaxana in a gentle hug. “Thank you for letting me feel that. It was so kind.”

“And thank you for being open with me about your pain. Your ability to be strong doesn’t mean you can’t let yourself be known. I would have been proud to be your wife, and I would have been proud to call you Imzadi.”

Tasha knew the word, and the sentiment flattered her. She just held on to Lwaxana for a long, long time, and let her emotions come.

**\----**

**In orbit of Pacifica**

“Well,  _ Ambassador _ Troi,” Jean-Luc Picard said, “it was good to have you.” They were walking toward the transporter room; Picard side-by-side with the Ambassador, and Will, Deanna and Tasha behind them, while Homm and the giant golden suitcase brought up the rear. Once again, Picard and Yar were in dress uniforms. 

“If you’d had me, Jean-Luc,” Lwaxana intimated, “it would have been far beyond good.” 

Will and Deanna both couldn’t help but let out short, coarse laughs. Tasha gently smacked Deanna on the arm as they walked. Picard, for his part, played it off with a smile. Nothing like a trip to the distant past to put him in a joking mood. 

They turned into the transporter room to a frustrated sigh from Lwaxana as they saw the two piscine Antedeans were awake and moving around. “What are they still doing here,” she said of the Antedeans with mild disgust. Chief O’Brien and Lieutenant Commander Data stood behind the transporter controls.

Picard was surprised by Lwaxana’s reaction. Whatever he might think of her when at his worst, Picard never imagined she would be so biased against a species based on their appearance. “Since you are all going to the same conference, we thought you might like to beam down with the other delegates.”

Lwaxana rolled her eyes and turned to Picard. “They’re not delegates. Those two are assassins,” she sighed as if it was the most obvious fact in the world. 

“This is an outrage!” one of the Antedeans protested. “Lies!”

Lwaxana scoffed at the feigned insult. “Don't bother to deny it. Your minds are so unsophisticated I can read your thoughts in my sleep.” She looked to Data at the transporter. “Their robes are lined with ultritium, highly explosive, virtually undetectable by your transporter.”

In a surprised tone, for him, Data confirmed the fact. 

A moment later, the two assassins were enveloped in a blast of light and heat. If they couldn’t complete their mission they had decided to take at least someone with them. A torrent of hot air blew through the room and stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Where the two assassins had stood was a hole two meters across that stopped half a meter into the deck plating. Shocked, Picard looked around to assess what had happened.

Deanna Troi of the Q Continuum stood with her hand in front of her, palm out, and looked around sheepishly. Will Riker laughed, Jean-Luc Picard applauded softly, Lwaxana Troi silently thanked her daughter for saving their lives, and Tasha Yar put an arm around Deanna in half a hug. 

They said goodbyes, and as Lwaxana Troi waited to dematerialize, she fixed her eyes not on her own daughter but on Tasha Yar. Tasha again felt that wave of contentment that Lwaxana had shared with her the day before.  _ Take care of yourself, Natasha _ , Lwaxana thought to her,  _ and let others take care of you too. _

Tasha’s smile matched Lwaxana’s as the Daughter of the Fifth House disappeared from the platform. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I never expected to ship Lwaxana Troi and Tasha Yar but... here we are? More episode adaptations to come in this AU, so thank you all for coming on this trip with me! Continued thanks to convenientmisfires for inspiration and encouragement. Some dialogue is from the original episode, and borrowed from the transcript at http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/161.htm 
> 
> For the first time we see time starting to get away from Deanna, which is important to the theme of this AU. Not only are they coping with omnipotence and the passage of time, but it's clear that they may eventually lose that battle. Also we see a flashback to the decision to pass over Data to promote Yar. There could be some interesting stories to tell with Data in this AU, but I don't know if I will get around to them.


	4. "Déjà Q"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For 24 hours from posting this chapter on 12 Feb 2021 (US Eastern time) I'm running a poll at https://twitter.com/1701Trekkie/status/1360424223995486209?s=20 about whether or not I should do "Legacy" as an episode, even thought it might not feature Will and Deanna.

**U.S.S.** **_Enterprise-D_ ** **\-- In Orbit of Bre’el IV**

**Stardate 43539.1**

Nothing frustrated Jean-Luc Picard more than the feeling of impotence. He had spent eighteen powerless years under his father’s thumb and he never intended to feel powerless again. Even after years in command of this immensely powerful starship he still felt powerless from time to time. He was in one such situation now. 

The planet’s moon was falling and there was no known explanation and no clear way to stop it. From the ship’s bridge, Picard was looking into the terrified faces of the planet’s great minds while listening to options from his own crew. 

“We'd need to apply a delta-V of about four kps,” Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge said over the intercom from Engineering. “Even with warp power to the tractor beam, it would mean exceeding recommended impulse engine output by at least forty-seven percent. It’d be like an ant pushing a tricycle. A slim chance at best.” Picard sighed. He wasn’t an engineer or an astrophysicist, but he knew that was a lot. 

“It’s better than doing nothing,” Commander Tasha Yar said. Now in her third year as Picard’s First Officer, she had swagger to match her station. Picard agreed, and Tasha began to order the crew to coordinate relief efforts with the planet. 

“Captain,” Lieutenant Worf said from behind the sweeping arc of the tactical station. “We’re receiving a hail from a shuttle that just… appeared at the edge of the system.” 

“Appeared?” Tasha interjected. She knew from her time crewing the Tactical station that there were many ways that ships entered sensor range, but “just appeared” was not one of them. Even if it had dropped out of warp, Worf would have detected subspace distortions long ago. Tasha knew Worf was too meticulous to ignore that.

“Yes, Commander, appeared,” Worf reiterated. 

“Put the hail onscreen,” Picard conceded. 

It was instantly obvious how such a ship could appear from nowhere when its occupants came into view. Q, Q, and Q stared back at them. One was the entity they had encountered at Farpoint station. Another was the former First Officer of the Enterprise. The third was former Ship’s Counselor. 

The former First Officer spoke first with a mix of mirth and duty in his voice. “Sorry to just appear, Jean-Luc,” Will Riker said. “We didn’t just want to show up on board.” It wasn’t the first time he and his Imzadi had conjured a ship to hail the  _ Enterprise _ before coming on board. They had decided long before that it was impolite to board the ship without asking. This course of action always seemed the most appropriate.

“What is  _ he _ doing with you?” Picard stressed. The last time he had seen the Q from Farpoint, the entity had demanded to join his crew then flung them into the path of a Borg starship to prove that they needed him. The encounter cost him eighteen crewmembers.

“He has been expelled from the Continuum, Captain,” said Deanna Troi. She continued to call Picard “Captain,” and had never broken the habit. She considered the  _ Enterprise _ a part of her more than Will did. They were, technically, on indefinite leave. “And he made a surprising request.”

“I asked to be made Human and brought here,” Q said. “I could have chosen to exist as a Markoffian sea lizard or a Belzoidian flea. Anything I wished as long as it was mortal.”

“Why here?” asked Tasha with disdain. She had faced her own torments at the hands of Q. Once, she was frozen solid for “disrespecting” Q’s mockery of a courtroom. Another time, she was placed on the edge of nothingness for committing a feigned penalty in the game that ultimately elevated Will and Deanna to Q-hood. 

“Because, dear Tasha,” Q responded in a sad, pitiful tone so elevated that it was impossible to take sincerely, “in all the universe the closest thing I have to a friend is your dear captain.” 

Picard sighed and gently lowered his face into his palm. 

**\----**

**The Q Continuum**

**Nanoseconds Earlier**

Will and Deanna were not typically allowed to visit the Continuum freely. Despite their omnipotence, it appeared to be limited by the collective will of the Continuum. They were shocked, therefore, when they were summoned to serve as witnesses at a tribunal of sorts. 

To them, the Continuum appeared as an endless void of blinding white. They sat on plush chairs to one side of a bewildering scene. Three Q, all in robes that Deanna recalled from Farpoint, sat opposite a single figure on an elevated platform -- the Q they knew too well.

“Please!” Q begged of his judges, “I can change! I’ve brought new life to the Continuum!” he pleaded, gesturing to Will and Deanna. “They have already begun to revitalize this place! People are starting to talk again!”

“Do you think,” the lead judge of the tribunal said, “that this outweighs your crimes?” 

“What crimes?” Q responded, feigning ignorance.

“You placed their ship in the path of the Borg,” the lead judge began. “Before that, you wagered with its captain that we would never interfere with them again. Elsewhere, you made yourself known as the ‘God of Lies.’” 

Q couldn’t resist a smirk at the title.

The lead judge continued. “The incident with the El-Aurians. Exposing the trial to the Humans. The issues with the Calamar--”

“I did nothing wrong!” Q interjected to protest. 

“Silence!” the lead judge bellowed so loudly that the void itself noticeably dimmed. “It is the judgment of this tribunal that you be hereby and henceforth expelled from this Continuum.”

Will and Deanna looked at each other in shock. Q, for whatever his past had been, had been surprisingly fair with them. Q didn’t have to choose to invite Will to the Continuum. Q certainly didn’t have to bring Deanna with him when she helped Will pass Q’s test. There were now countless people alive because Q gave them these powers.The idea that their powers could disappear this quickly shocked them. They then looked at Q with sympathy and dread. Q looked at the tribunal with shock and dismay. 

“Choose your mortal form,” the lead judge said, pronouncing the sentence.

Q looked at Will and Deanna and spoke in an instant.

**\----**

**USS** **_Enterprise-D_ ** **, Observation Lounge**

“But why did they send you two with him?” Picard wondered aloud at Will and Deanna. The three of them were joined by Tasha and Q in the ship’s Observation lounge. Picard sat at the head of the table with Tasha to his right and Will to his left, while Q was seated at the far end with Deanna on his right. Doctor Beverly Crusher sat next to Deanna, and the android Lieutenant Commander Data sat next to Tasha. 

“I got the impression the Continuum wanted to make an example of him,” Will said. 

At the other end of the table, Deanna nodded. “I told you before, Captain, that it feels like we’re also being tested. This feels like the next stage of that trial.”

Q made a dismissive sound. “You think that they would still have any interest in you? You’ve done nothing but boringly explore space for the past two years.” 

“We’ve done more than that, Q!” Picard straightened in his chair to defend himself and his ship as a reflex. Q rolled his eyes.

“He is human, captain,” Deanna intervened. “Regardless of what else may be going on, Q is no longer welcome back to the Continuum.” 

Q scoffed again. “It’s not like you spend any time there anyway.” 

Picard looked between Riker and Troi, puzzled. 

Deanna answered the unspoken question. “While we’re omnipotent, that omnipotence has its limits.”

“Call it mostly-nipotent,” Riker joked. No one laughed, but Data started to process the attempted joke. 

“Generally,” Deanna continued, “we can do anything except freely travel to and from the Continuum. We’re only allowed there when summoned. And since Q here was something of our sponsor, we get the feeling that we’re expected to learn from his example.”

“And what kind of example is that?” Picard grumbled. “Making moons fall out of the sky to terrorize unsuspecting innocents?”   
“I haven't the vaguest idea what you're talking about.” Q sniped back, genuinely unaware of the situation outside the ship. Even if he was, he probably wouldn’t care much. Rocks hit planets all the time. He ran through a litany of memories of rocks-hitting-planets. Including that one that exploded over the forest of that backwater that… oh, that was Earth. He shook his head to clear it once he realized the android was talking. 

Data was recapping the situation on Bre’el IV for Will, Deanna, and, ostensibly, Q. Deanna and Will had been paying polite attention. Q noticed that he should at least be pretending to do so, and folded his hands on the table. 

“So you see,” Picard asked, “we have a planet about to be struck by its own moon and an entire population unable to avoid it. And here you are, thrown out of the Continuum for mischief. I find it terribly convenient.”

“An absolute coincidence, I assure you,” Q replied. “But if you have a problem with a moon, perhaps I could help.” 

Everyone around the table exchanged mildly surprised looks. Except Data, who was still working out Riker’s joke. 

“You really want to help?” Tasha asked, breaking the awkward silence.

“Why yes, Tasha, I do,” Q said, sitting up in his seat. “You all scoffed at me when I said I wanted to join the crew, so now here I am. I can be more useful than you know. You have a moon in a deteriorating orbit. I've known moons throughout the universe. Big ones, small ones. I'm something of an expert. I could help you with this one, if you’ll trust me.” 

“What’ve you got to lose?” Riker asked of Picard. 

“Only the lives of countless people on Bre’el IV,” Picard griped back. 

“If he has ideas Geordi hasn’t tried,” Beverly intervened, “then it would be a waste to ignore him.” Deanna smiled at Beverly’s suggestion. 

“Fine,” Picard agreed with a sigh. “Data,” Picard said to get the Android’s attention. Data didn’t respond, so Picard said his name again, with a bit more urgency. 

“Yes, sir?” Data responded, coming out of his own haze of thought. He had finally figured out that “mostly-nipotent” was an intentional mis-rendering of the compound word “omni-potent” for comedic effect, rather than an attempt on Commander Riker’s part to coin a neologism. The comedy derived from “mostly” contrasting against “omni,” a root word meaning “all,” and the apparent error of replacing only the “om” in the word with “mostly” instead of the entire root word “omni.” The correct rendering of the word would therefore be “mostlypotent” which, Data concluded, would have produced a laugh. 

“Escort this Q down to Engineering, see if Commander LaForge can put him to work,” Picard ordered. Data nodded and rose, guiding Q to the port exit toward the turbolift. Data could be heard saying, as the pair disappeared out of sight, what Q thought of Will’s joke. 

Picard turned back to Beverly. “He really is human?” 

“He is,” she responded, “unless he’s going out of his way to deceive every hand scanner we have. We could put him in a biobed for more readings but it would probably be a waste of time. Every last detail makes him look like a human male in his mid-thirties.” 

“As we said, sir,” Deanna chimed in. “The Continuum wants to make sure we don’t think of him as a role model.” 

“I should hope not,” Picard scoffed. 

**\----**

**Deanna’s Quarters**

Deanna still loved this ship. In some sense it was still technically her home. Her belongings remained in storage here, and she brought them out to decorate the small quarters each time she came back aboard. She and Will kept separate quarters here, assigned by Tasha. 

Here, the Imzadi fell back into old ways. On this ship it felt like they were no longer omnipotent. Deanna found herself ordering old meals at convenient dinner times. Will always walked everywhere even when he might run late. They didn’t spend a lot of time here, but she was glad to be back. Even the familiar emotions of the crew were here, and she loved to let them into her mind. 

Deanna was lying on her bed, feet toward the door and eyes closed, when she felt someone approaching. Someone nervous and awkward. Moments later, she heard the door chime and she knew who it was. “Come in.” 

Tasha Yar had softened her rough edges since the last time Deanna Troi had crossed her path. That time, Tasha had an encounter with Deanna’s mother that had left her a very different person. Aside from the recent uniform redesign, Tasha stood differently in her uniform. She was no longer a coiled serpent ready to strike. She was more relaxed, more calm, and even let her hair grow longer, though not by much. Tasha did not, however, look either nervous or awkward. 

“Hi,” the First Officer said as she was welcomed in. “I wanted to see how you were getting along.”

“Fine,” was Deanna’s response. The room was already decorated as if she had never left these small quarters. The size didn’t matter to Deanna. With her empathic sense, the ship always seemed small to her. “But that’s not why you’re here.” Deanna sat up on the bed, propped up on her hands, and fixed her eyes on Tasha.

Tasha swallowed hard and stepped into the room. The door closed behind her as she dropped herself into a chair. 

“You want to talk about what happened with my mother,” Deana intuited. She didn’t read minds, just emotions. But after long years learning how to help people deal with their mental state she knew what people were thinking more often than not. 

Tasha couldn’t deny it and nodded. 

“It’s all right,” Deanna said with a smile. She came to sit on her legs at the foot of the bed. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I could tell by the way you left things that it was amicable. Even if my mother can be a handful at times.” Only she could say that, of course. If anyone else insulted her mother they would receive at best a withering glance and at worst a sharp remark. She supposed she could turn a detractor into a toad if she wanted, but that seemed a little too much. 

“She was very kind,” Tasha confessed. She leaned her elbows on her knees, laced her fingers, and looked at the floor. “She took my rejection very well.”

“I’m sure she appreciated your candor,” Deanna said. As far as Deanna knew, however, Tasha had simply rejected her mother’s proposal of marriage. Tasha knew a bit more, and Deanna felt the half-truth not as deception but as a shot of guilt from Tasha. Before Tasha could confess more, though, Deanna spoke again. “Whatever went on between you two is for you two alone. You do not owe me anything.” 

Tasha’s relief was audible as well as palpable to Deanna’s empathic sense. 

“So, Commander Yar,” Deanna said with playful seriousness, “what are your intentions toward my mother?” 

Deanna felt Tasha’s heart skip a beat from across the room, but the answer would have to wait as a blinding white light began to saturate the room.

**\----**

**Ten-Forward**

As the light began to fade, Will Riker raised his hands and looked at Guinan with an innocent face. 

“I didn’t do it! I swear!” he said, almost too quickly. Of course he hadn’t, he knew better. Guinan had, mere moments earlier, stabbed Q in the hand with a fork to make sure he was as mortal as he claimed. Will couldn’t imagine crossing Guinan after seeing that. 

Q, sitting at the bar next to Data, looked out the large bay windows. A ball of light with a distinctly hazy appearance passed through the window and flew toward him. 

“What is that?” Data asked, cocking his head. 

“A Calamarain,” Guinan answered as the light enveloped Q. Q leaped to his feet, trying to pull the creature off of him in fear. 

Will stood, frozen in place. A dozen options ran through his head. He could pull the energy off of Q with a thought, but would that be interfering? Would the Continuum take a dim view to him rescuing Q? But Q was a living and helpless being, but was this within the ethical bounds he and Deanna had set?

Data intervened before Will could make a decision. The android reached for Q only to encounter something like a force field, sending a shock through his frame. An instant later, Will perceived a flicker of the ship’s shields outside the windows, and the Calamarain was driven from Q and out the window. 

More disturbing to Riker than seeing Q beg for help while prostrate on the floor was the idea that he had been frozen in indecision. It was an uncommon occurrence to say the least, and he found he did not care for it one bit. 

**\----**

**Observation Lounge**

Will Riker remained silent the entire meeting. There was discussion of the Calamarain and the falling moon, and eventually Picard had dismissed the assembly. Will remained behind, his back to the wall of ships, staring out at the sweep of the hull aft toward the nacelles. Deanna, who had participated in the meeting, moved to the chair next to her Imzadi. She had felt his inner turmoil the entire meeting and he knew he never had to start a conversation at the beginning with her. 

“We could make this all end right now,” he said without looking at her. His arms rested on the stubby arms of the pinkish-purple chairs, his hands flopping into his lap.

“We could,” Deanna agreed. She leaned her arm into his, sitting with one leg folded under the other and her weight on her left elbow. “Would it be playing god?” 

For one of a very rare handful of times, he felt like they were not on the same page. She was thinking of the moon. He was thinking of Q and the Calamarain. 

“Q,” Will said, eyes still looking out the window. “We could take him away, put him somewhere safe, everything would be fine. And yes, we could fix the moon at the same time.” 

Deanna reached over and placed her right hand on his. “We could, and I wouldn’t stop you. But there must be some reason you haven’t done it yet.”

Will moved his right hand to laced his fingers through hers. Only then did he turn to look into her eyes. Even if she couldn’t read his thoughts, he could never lie to her again.

“Because this isn’t just about him, and it isn’t just about us, is it?” He answered Deanna with another question. 

“I don’t think it is,” she said, walking the fine line between confessor and companion. “We’re here to learn a lesson, and fixing everything seems like we would miss that lesson.” 

“Then what,” Will asked, growing more frustrated, “what are we supposed to do? You heard the briefing. People are already dying down there. Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing we promised to stop?” 

“I don’t know,” Deanna sighed. She was also dealing with the same dilemma. While she could always open her mind and retreat into the white noise of the ship, she knew Will couldn’t do that the same way. Perhaps she had done it too often this trip, or focused too much on the little things. “It’s like they say. ‘One death is a tragedy…’”

“‘... a million deaths is a statistic,’” Will completed. “It always comes back to Quadra Sigma,” he said, recalling the very first use of his powers to save an innocent life. Just like the miners on Quadra Sigma III, Will had resisted saving hundreds of lives at a whim but he couldn’t resist using the power to save a single child right in front of him. 

“You had good instincts,” Deanna said, leaning a bit harder into him. It was hard to say who was supporting who now. “And I know it’s hard to follow these rules we’ve set out.” 

Deanna sighed and lowered her head to Will’s shoulder. “I can feel it, just at the edge of my mind. Even when I close myself off to it, there is so much fear down on the planet that I can’t block it out. But I’m not their god, and I don’t want to be.” 

“Why not?” Will said, leaning his head on hers. “We would be good gods. Benevolent. They would want for nothing.” For a moment, he pictured what that would be like. They could make the planet a paradise. All planets could be paradise under their loving protection. 

“At first, perhaps,” Deanna agreed. “But in time we would grow bored. Just like Q. We wouldn’t listen as much as we used to. As horrible as it sounds, they would forget to do things for themselves.” 

Will scoffed. “That sounds like some up-by-your-bootstraps nonsense.” 

“Not really,” Deanna said. “We would want to create paradise, but paradise takes so much work. Even Earth isn’t easy to maintain.”

Will remembered she couldn’t read thoughts, not even his unless he wanted her to. She knew him so well that she knew he would want to create paradise. Earth was never a paradise for Will Riker, but he understood her point. 

“We would want to do everything for them, to make sure they never hurt themselves,” he said with a sigh, raising his head from hers. “And when we eventually left, they wouldn’t know how to build for themselves, grow for themselves…” 

“Then we would become their Gods of Lies,” Deanna said, sadly. 

Deanna remembered a similar story from an  _ Enterprise _ long ago. She smiled thinking Will Riker came to the same conclusion that James Kirk had. She nuzzled her head deeper into his shoulder as they both looked out at the stars. Will raised his head and looked down at her. He sighed, both content and sorrowful. 

“But what about Q? Why can’t we just take him somewhere he can’t cause harm?” Will asked.

Deanna’s response was cut off before she began by Worf barging into the room.

“Q,” Worf said with urgency. “Did you see him?” 

“No,” Deanna replied. “He left when everyone else did.” 

Worf tapped his combadge and reported this fact to the First Officer. 

“Come back out here,” Yar replied over the comm. “He’s stolen a shuttle.”

**\----**

**Bre’el IV, Western Continent**

**The Next Day**

Q had chosen to sacrifice his life to prevent the Calamarain from attacking the Enterprise again. Will and Deanna had been both shocked and a little proud to learn of his selflessness. In what had seemed like a whirlwind of activity, Q stole a shuttlecraft, disappeared, and was suddenly back on the bridge celebrating the restoration of his powers with a mariachi band. And now, Q was walking through a devastated oceanfront community with them trying to see things their way. 

“I have to hand it to you, Q,” Will said as he surveyed a ruined home. “I don’t know if I would have done what you did.”

“You really think you’re above selflessness?” Q chuckled. “If you were really selfish, you would still be sitting at Picard’s right hand being dragged from one dull survey mission to another.” 

“And what about you?” Deana asked of Q. “Would you really have let the Calamarain kill you?” She stopped by another home, glad to see all of its occupants had the opportunity to flee ahead of the tidal surges that scoured this area before the moon’s orbit was corrected. 

“It was that or let the Calamarain destroy the  _ Enterprise _ to get to me, and I couldn’t have that,” Q chuckled to himself. “Couldn’t let all that good work go to waste.”

“Good work?” Riker scoffed. “What work have you done there? You said they’re just doing dull survey missions”

“I told you once, and I’ll tell you again,” Q said with a bit of fatigue. This whole business of ‘walking’ did not suit him in the least. The idea that they should travel from place to place using mortal means was simply exhausting. “We need to know what humanity will become when they finally come of age. The  _ Enterprise _ is part of that. The Continuum is still not happy that I let you in on all of that, and Picard simply cannot get it through his thick skull. I’ve set them on a path that ensures that crew will pass the Continuum’s tests from here on out.”

“Because they know something bigger than themselves is out there,” Deanna intuited. She really had the Continuum’s number some days. Going back to when Q tested Will, she had the feeling that it could have ended disastrously without her. “That’s what they lacked, that sense of insight.”

“As perceptive as always,” Q praised her. “You know, Riker, she really is your better half. Maybe we should have just kept her.” 

Will scoffed at Q as the trio came upon some more debris. With a wave of his hand, he gently lifted sheets of collapsed metal to find two victims of the devastating tides who had not escaped. He looked back at Q. “Maybe, but you said yourself that we’re simply two pieces of a puzzle. We’re not the only ones.” 

Q and Deanna approached the scene two lovers, wrapped around each other. In their last moments, each one tried to offer their body to protect the other. In the end, it hadn’t mattered. 

Deanna looked at the pair and back at Q. “Selflessness isn’t merely human. Parents share that instinct when it comes to their children, and lovers share that instinct too. And so, it seems, do you. At least when it comes to the  _ Enterprise _ .” 

Q laughed derisively, but Deanna could feel it covered something else. Q cared about Picard and the  _ Enterprise _ in his own way. He strode up next to Riker and looked down at the pair.

“Well,” Q admitted, stretching his arm over the two lifeless forms, “if I was spared for my selflessness I suppose it’s only polite to pay it forward.”

The couple coughed and panted suddenly. As their lungs emptied of seawater, tears of joy poured from their eyes.

Q was long gone before the survivors looked up. Having done two good deeds in as many days seemed to be too much for the trickster. It was just as well. As far as Deanna had seen, Q didn’t care much for what happened “next.” He would perform his miracles, or tricks, and simply move on. 

Not so Deanna Troi and Will Riker. Being saviors was only the first step for them. They smiled at each other and reached down to help the pair back to their feet.

“You’re lucky we came along when we did,” Will said, steadying one.

“Come on,” Deanna continued, putting an arm around the other to steady them. “There’s a relief station down the beach. I’m sure they’ll have something to warm you up.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks always to convenientmisfires for the inspiration and encouragement. 
> 
> Some dialogue from the original episode as always copied and pasted from http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/161.htm
> 
> Yes, I promoted Tasha from Lt.Cmdr. to full Commander this episode. Geordi went from Lt.(j.g.) to Lt.Cmdr. in the same time, so why not? 
> 
> As for the line "her time crewing the Tactical station" I point you to this essential tweet/tiktok: https://twitter.com/thespacegal/status/1263889913935585280
> 
> There's a bit of essential lore missing from a chapter I have yet to post (still a little iffy on it, it happens between chapters 1 & 2) - when they go back to "normal," Will & Deanna essentially go back to how they were in Hide and Q unless they consciously choose otherwise. That means when she goes back to "normal," Deanna still has her empathic sense, while Will wouldn't unless he specifically chooses to.


	5. Interlude: The Best of Both Worlds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tasha Yar prepares to confront the Borg who have kidnapped Captain Picard.
> 
> After, Will and Deanna visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t do a TNG AU without touching on The Best of Both Worlds, especially since Riker is replaced with Yar. While Deanna and Will would not have a full story for this episode, I think it only fitting to touch on how Tasha would approach this situation. Also, Will and Deanna would never be able to stay away after it was over, so it’s only fitting that they drop in on Tasha after. This is just two scenes while I’m getting myself ready to tackle “The Loss.” 
> 
> Also, based on the results of the Twitter poll, I am also writing “Legacy” as a separate fic. Will and Deanna would make the episode too easy, but I’m too interested in writing the episode with Tasha replacing Will.

**U.S.S.** **_Enterprise_ ** **-D, Captain’s Ready Room**

**Stardate 44002**

Tasha Yar didn’t want to be captain. She never wanted her own ship, let alone this ship. She had received a battlefield promotion to Captain from Admiral J.P. Hanson not long ago. Moments later, they had lost touch with his fleet intercepting the Borg at Wolf 359. 

Tasha still couldn’t bring herself to use what she still thought of as Captain Picard’s chair so she sat on the couch, looking at the desk that was now hers. But she still needed advice, and there was one person who would give her the most direct advice of all. 

The door of the Ready Room chimed, and Captain Yar beckoned Guinan in. The El-Aurian looked confused to see no one behind the desk, and then bemused to see Tasha on the couch. 

“Picard never called me up here,” Guinan began, walking behind Picard’s desk. She settled into his chair. “But we talked, whenever one of us needed to. I’m glad to know I still have the captain’s ear. What’s on your mind, Captain?”

Tasha didn’t like that title. She’d been offered the U.S.S.  _ Melbourne _ less than a week ago, an offer she had intended to turn down. She didn’t see herself as a captain, yet here she was. 

“How do I beat them?” Tasha asked. ”How do I beat them when they have him?” While someone more sentimental would have been clinging to Jean-Luc Picard, Tasha Yar knew to move on. She’d seen so much death in her life she knew that there would be time to mourn later. For now, she needed to figure out how to help stop the Borg from reaching Earth. 

Tasha knew Picard as well as any first officer could know their commander, but Guinan knew him better. She knew him better than anyone could know him. Even Beverly Crusher didn’t know Jean-Luc Picard half as well as Guinan. None of them ever asked why, but none of them ever forgot it. 

Guinan folded her hands in her lap and rocked back in the captain’s desk chair. “I've heard a lot of people talking down in Ten Forward. They expect to be dead in the next day or so. They trust you. They like you. But they don't believe anyone can save them.”

“I know that I can,” Yar said with a confidence she didn’t feel. If Deanna was there, she would sense Yar putting a brave face on over blind terror. It was a trait Tasha had mastered on Turkana IV and it was serving her well now. 

“Maybe you can,” Guinan said without much strength behind her words. “But when someone is convinced they’re going to die tomorrow, they’ll probably find a way to make it happen.” 

“Then I need to find a way to let him go,” Tasha continued to say, without conviction. “But he wrote the book on this ship.” 

“And the Borg know everything he knows,” Guinan said unsentimentally. “It's time to throw that book away. And this,” Guinan said, rising and moving behind the captain’s chair, “this is your chair now, Captain.” 

Tasha stood and looked at the chair and sighed. “Do you know much about Starfleet history, Guinan?”

She shook her head. “Only what Picard told me. Mostly old stories of war and peace.” 

“Have you ever heard the name Rachel Garrett?” Tasha asked. 

“Can’t say I have,” Guinan said, for purposes of conversation. She knew the names of the captains of the  _ Enterprise  _ from Picard, but if she said she knew the name the conversation would be over. 

The conversation was about to end itself, however. The young voice of Ensign Wesley Crusher came over the comm “Captain, we’re approaching the Wolf System.”

“I’m on my way,” Tasha replied to Wesley before finishing her thought to Guinan. “Look her up. If we get out of this, we’ll talk about her and her  _ Enterprise _ .”

Tasha walked out onto the bridge, Guinan two steps behind her. Tasha took her place at the center of the bridge, on her feet. The blonde, no-nonsense Commander Elizabeth Shelby was at the First Officer’s station. Grim pronouncements about the system came in. Negligible power signatures. Practically no life signs. And no sign of the Borg ship. 

Worf, as diligent as ever, noticed eddy currents. Data concluded that the eddies represented the course of the Borg. Wesley plotted a course to follow. 

Captain Natasha Yar directed Worf to open a shipwide channel. 

“This is the Captain speaking. We are pursuing the Borg ship that abducted Captain Picard. The Borg know everything he did, but he doesn’t know anything about what happened since he left. We have new plans. New tactics. New ways to stop them. We will intercept the Borg ship and stop it from reaching Earth.”

She looked around at the faces on the bridge. Shelby was resolute. Wesley was scared. Even Worf was worried. Data was… still Data. Her eyes fixed on him as she continued. 

“I know Earth is home to many of you. For even more of us, our ancestors came from there. For all of us, it’s the heart of the Federation. It’s the guiding light that I followed when I came to Starfleet, and swear to you I won’t let that light go out. Not today. Not ever. Stay at your posts. Stay vigilant. This is the  _ Enterprise _ .” 

A lump formed in Tasha’s throat thinking of Rachel Garrett, the only woman -- the only  _ other _ woman -- to captain an  _ Enterprise _ , and the only captain to lose an  _ Enterprise _ in battle. 

“And history will never forget the name  _ Enterprise _ .” 

**\----**

**_Enterprise_ ** **Observation Lounge**

**Docked at McKinley Station, Earth**

**Stardate 44012**

Commander Tasha Yar sat reviewing PADD after PADD of refit schematics alone at the large conference table. She didn’t sit at the head of the table, that was Captain Picard’s seat again. She had decided the best way to deprive the Borg of Picard’s knowledge was to remove him from the ship. In doing so, they had found the back door to defeating the Borg. 

She’d received the Christopher Pike Medal of Valor and returned to the rank of Commander. Thankfully, the battlefield commission to Captain had expired with the crisis. Even though she was offered another ship and a permanent promotion, she finally convinced Starfleet that she did not want a ship of her own. 

The superstructure of McKinley Station was visible out the window, and beyond was the blue-and-white globe that the  _ Enterprise _ had again saved from doom. The door to the Conference Room chimed, and Tasha looked up, confused. Those doors didn’t lock. 

Puzzled, she said “Come in?”   
With that invitation, twin flashes of starlight appeared across the table from her and receded to reveal Deanna Troi and William Riker. Will’s hands were folded on the table in front of him, Deanna’s tucked under one of her legs. Both of their faces were beaming. 

“I’m so proud of you, Tasha,” Deanna gushed. “You were amazing.” She unfolded from the chair, walked around the table, and hugged Tasha in her seat.

“It was really something,” Will confessed. “I never could have given a speech like that.”

Tasha smiled. “Thank you,” she said modestly. “I was almost hoping you would show up to save us.”

Deanna released the hug and returned to her seat as Will started to respond.

“You know we couldn’t,” Will said with a shrug. “It was definitely a moment in history, it would break the rules. We were able to save a few dozen civilians at Wolf 359, though.”

“Most of those ships didn’t have time to offload their families before they went into battle,” Deanna noted solemnly.

“I think the Captain could talk to you, Deanna,” Tasha said. “He’s been through a lot.”

“We’ll go back down to the planet and ask to come up the proper way,” Deanna said with a nod. “We just wanted to talk to you first, alone.” 

“You really did something impressive,” Will praised her again. “I know we don’t do wishes, it’s not like we’re genies or anything--” 

“--but if you ever need anything,” Deanna said, cutting Will off. He was starting to ramble, he was that impressed with how well Tasha handled the situation. “Anything, just ask. We can’t promise we can do it, but ask.” 

Tasha shook her head. “I really have everything I need,’ she said. She had very few needs, and a starship could fulfill all of them and more. “But thank you.”

Will and Deanna nodded with a smile, and with twin flashes they were gone. 

Tasha looked back down at the pile of PADDs. Maybe she should have asked for help with the refit logistics. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, yesterday was the 31st anniversary of "Yesterday's Enterprise" which tells the story of Rachel Garrett and the Enterprise-C. Go watch it. It's good.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a twitter conversation with, and with considerable editing and input from convenientmisfires. This fic would not exist without her encouragement.
> 
> The parts of this fic that adapt scenes in "Hide and Q" use dialogue that is almost entirely unchanged from the original episode. convenientmisfires recommended at least one edit to that dialogue that I adopted. Most of the dialogue was cut-and-pasted from the transcript at http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/111.htm. 
> 
> The name T'Savas was adapted from https://kirshara.wordpress.com/tag/vulcan-names/ Tasav - tah-savas - "Many daughters, on the other hand, were named Tasav (tah-savas = “unobtainable fruit”), suggesting a healthy fertility that was beyond the reach of the average man."
> 
> Apart from Troi being present, presumably due to some unstated issue at Starbase G-6 where she had departed for at the beginning of the episode, the major point of departure is more subtle. In the episode, Picard extracts a promise from Riker not to use the powers of Q. Here, with Troi's presence, Riker doesn't offer a promise and so Picard is forced to order him to not use the powers of Q. That gives him more license to disobey the order, while he refused to break a promise in the episode.
> 
> This is my first fic after a lifetime of being a Star Trek fan. Your comments and feedback are very welcome.


End file.
